Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversial?

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Drago-Kazov, Nov 14, 2012.

  1. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 15, 2000
    Location:
    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    There is a local tv show (nothing trivial, a romantic dramedy revolving a round a weekly pub-quiz.) and there's this character with children who takes them tot he park and plays with them, a good dad y'know... but then it's lunch time and he calls out to his spawn on the play ground to come in to roost for a picnic... "Carrie! Harrison! It's lunch time!"

    I almost lost a kidney laughing.
     
  2. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 15, 2000
    Location:
    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    Leia Organa.

    lay (your/my/this) organ.

    Sound like a directive to flop out your member as much as laying pipe.

    I don't think George was getting much before Star Wars made it's first few million.
     
  3. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 20, 2007
    Location:
    inside teacake
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    That explains why once he didn't have to go Solo anymore he was able to have enough restraint to no longer shoot first.
     
  4. Shawnster

    Shawnster Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 28, 2008
    Location:
    Clinton, OH
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    Someone's gotta do it.

    Sure. I've had similar ideas myself. I would have loved to seen a 60s satire/commentary on the way Blacks/minorities were treated in the 50s and 60s by having our heroes discover a humanoid settled world with the exact opposite racial demographics and political/socio-economic structure. Black people are the majority and oppressing the whites.

    I'm sure that would have gone over like a Led Zeppelin.

    One of the things I noticed and appreciated greatly about ERB's John Carter of Mars series were that the Good Guys were Red, Yellow and Black (and Green) and the Bad Guys were White.
     
  5. Drago-Kazov

    Drago-Kazov Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jul 26, 2012
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    Kubrik could had made a good movie about that. Blacks from this Earth choosing to become opressors or help the white civil rights movement would had been an interesting dilema.
     
  6. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 11, 2008
    Location:
    Oregon
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    I agree, it sounds beautiful, and come on: what guy on this board wouldn't wrestle an angry tauntaun to date an actual Leia? :rommie:


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Man's_Burden_(film)
     
  7. stj

    stj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 27, 2006
    Location:
    the real world
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    ^^^Is that the movie with Sidney Poitier? Naturally a huge bomb, even though it was a cheapie.

    Steven Barnes wrote some alternate history novel with Africans colonizing the Americas and enslaving the Irish. Couldn't read it, I think to much Niven (and that means Pournelle) influence on him.

    Commonly there is no controversy, these things are just dsimissed as "boring" or "heavy handed." Calling something boring is never legit, because it's meaningless. Why is it boring? Given this is the golden age of melodrama, calling something "heavy handed" is a dead giveaway of bad faith argument. Sometimes they try to take the high road by pretending a superior taste for realistic and deep moral ambiguity and shades of grey and such trendy cliches, but the inability to discuss (or even cite) anything factual still gives those people away.
     
  8. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 8, 2005
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    Must be a different movie than the one you're thinking of. Poitier is not in this one.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Man's_Burden_(film)
     
  9. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2009
    Location:
    Ireland.
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    So basically Paul Kinsey's Star Trek screenplay from Mad Men (and IIRC a rejected idea for an actual Star Trek episode where aliens view McCoy as Uhura's slave.)

    I dunno. The racial/gender role reversal is kind of a hoary old SF cliche at this point (TNG's "Angel One" being a particularly weak example of it) and I have read some pretty strident criticisms of it as an idea. So at the very least it'd depend on execution that is subtle, sensitive and clever.
     
  10. stj

    stj Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 27, 2006
    Location:
    the real world
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    You're right, Harry Belafonte, not Sidney Poitier.

    PS I'm pretty sure that "subtle" is not right. There's plenty of subtlety in the denialism right now and importing it into a reversal would be both dreary and pointless. In fact, it might end up implicitly avowing the nonexistence of racism. But sensitive and clever is always desirable.
     
  11. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2002
    Location:
    Montgomery County, State of Maryland
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    If you think about it, technically speaking, if the reigning monarch and all of his/her heirs other than Leia were killed by the destruction of Alderaan, then she would thereafter have been the new Queen of Alderaan.

    Assuming, of course, that the destruction of Alderaan does not legally constitute an abolition of the Alderaanian Monarchy, of course. Otherwise, she's just a pretender, no different from, say, Vittorio Emanuele.
     
  12. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 15, 2000
    Location:
    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    That depends if Aalderan was more a physical entity or a legal entity underwritten by the Empire or the Senate.
     
  13. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 2, 2002
    Location:
    Montgomery County, State of Maryland
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    A polity is by definition a legal entity, not a unit of geography. Polities have a distinct geographic territory, but they are not the same thing as their territory. That's why it's not, for instance, Chile -- it's the Republic of Chile. That's why it's not Nebraska, it's the State of Nebraska. That's why it's not Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That's why it's not Norway, it's the Kingdom of Normandy.
     
  14. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 15, 2000
    Location:
    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    She could have been the princess of the entire star system, so the destruction of one measly planet shouldn't effect her legal standing...

    Just talking out loud, but after you blow a planet up, shouldn't that make it easy to strip mine, since it would be insane if the "Empire" didn't already have the tech to efficiently mine an asteroid field....

    Leasing mining rights would earn Leia a mint she could funnel straight back into the Rebellion and then underpin the New Republic.

    Although, it's pretty clear that the Emperor would have absorbed Alderan's resources into the imperial treasury, just like how America seizes houses of the extended relatives of drug dealers.
     
  15. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 20, 2007
    Location:
    inside teacake
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    Unless the asteroid field was declared by what was left of the Alderannians a memorial and mining it would be like digging up mass graves for gold fillings.
     
  16. The Mirrorball Man

    The Mirrorball Man Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 18, 1999
    Location:
    Switzerland
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    But then of course African swallows are non-migratory.
     
  17. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 20, 2007
    Location:
    inside teacake
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    This is not about coconuts, it's about RESPECT.
     
  18. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 15, 2000
    Location:
    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    Legally, one would assume (probably retroactively) the Death Star is only allowed to strike against enemy camps.

    Anyone still claiming loyalty to Aalderan is a traitor to the empire and likely will be shipped off to a concentration camp, which is step one towards 3 generations later when the future Imperial Citizens are utterly ignorant of Aalderan and all records have been redacted from the Imperial historical database...

    "Justice Star"
     
  19. TemporalFlux

    TemporalFlux Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Sep 13, 2002
    Location:
    The End of Time
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    Of course, there is going to be that one nut out there with a small ship and a bucket of glue; he'll have "Save the Planet" painted on the hull.
     
  20. Base_Delta_Zero

    Base_Delta_Zero Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    May 4, 2004
    Location:
    Maine
    Re: Would a black slaver or a concentration camp chief be controversia

    Whites enslaved blacks and Nazis killed whomever they felt like hating that week. Blacks also sold rival tribesmen (those they didn't slaughter) into slavery in the past and are currently slaughtering each other in places like the Sudan in ways just as cruel as those dreamed up by some Nazi camp commandant. White slavery has been a booming business in the Arab world for centuries. I would think it obvious that the color of one's skin is immaterial to the evil one can commit.

    Attempting a "reversal" like this would only be controversial if you were ignorant of reality.

    Since most people are, you might just have a critical hit on your hands.