Re: CHAT: Star Wars and its conlangs

On Mon, 24 May 1999, Brian Betty wrote:

> I mean, when was the last time you saw black people and white people as
> main characters on the same show when that show wasn't Star Trek, Sliders,
> or some other scifi set in the future? All sitcoms are racially segregated,
> and it makes me sick. There is more racial diversity in the original Star
> Trek crew than there is on all of non-scifi television today all added up.
> And that is *sad.*
>
Other nations do marginally better in making programmes where protagonists
don't need to be racially segregated.  One genre which is overlooked, not
without reason, are soaps.  I'm not thinking of the glamorous American
soaps from Planet Spelling, but soaps which are made to reflect the social
realities of other nations.  New Zealand's own soap, Shortland Street, set
in a hospital, includes Pakeha (European-descended NZers), Maori, Pacific
Islanders, and Asians.  This still doesn't stop it from being a comedy
show cast by Martians with NZ accents in my opinion, they can't be human!
Even can't-act, won't-act beautiful people can be used to challenge racial
bigotry.  There are one or two American shows that I enjoy which are not
racially segregated, I'm thinking of ER.

I would like to do a culturally pluralist conlang one day, a sort of
reaction to ethnic cleansing.

- andrew.

Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

"Orcs eat Hummers."
                        - Old Orc Saying.