The Real Phantom Menace: Manufactured Outrage

The collector investment resell value of this Lego set just skyrocketed thanks to the cultural and racial hypersensitivity of those looking to be offended by anything and everything in the world.

Why?

Back in January, a Turkish cultural group in Austria became outraged over a Lego set:

Lego has been accused of racism by the Turkish community over a Star Wars toy allegedly depicting a mosque.

The critics claim that the Jabba’s Palace model, part of Lego’s Star Wars range, offends Muslims as it resembles the Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul – one of the world’s most renowned mosques.

Members of the Turkish Cultural Community of Austria group also accused the toy manufacturer of depicting Asians as having ‘deceitful and criminal personalities’.

By what stretch of the imagination?

Leaving the ridiculousness of the accusation aside, for a moment, I’d like to ask, “Why single out Lego?” Their toy set was influenced by George Lucas’ movie. Why not go to the source and inspiration, instead? And if they’re going to read racism into this, they must be hypersensitive to a lot of things going on in this world.

A post on the community’s website contains a picture of the slug-like creature’s Lego home, pointing out similarities with the Istanbul mosque.

Outraged Muslims have criticised the toy producer on the community’s website, accusing it of deliberately placing contextual errors in the toy.

The case came to light when a Turkish man expressed his dissatisfaction with the toy after it was purchased for his son by a family member.

After investigating, Dr Melissa Günes, General Secretary of the Turkish Cultural Community, said that Lego had been contacted with an official complaint.

After initial resistance, the Danish company caved. I’m not sure why, as I believe world public opinion as well as common sense intelligence would see the complaint as either groundless or in the “who gives a rat’s ass?” category:

Austria’s Turkish community claimed a victory in its fight against Danish toy giant Lego yesterday after the firm agreed to withdraw a Star Wars toy set featuring a mosque-like building inhabited by an obese, hookah–smoking alien, following complaints that it was anti-Muslim.

~~~

Lego initially dug in its heels and refused the request. The company insisted the product was merely a faithful reproduction. “We see no reason to take it off the market, we have simply followed the film,” the company said.

Here is how Jabba’s palace appears in Lucas’ film, Return of the Jedi (1983):

But yesterday it emerged it had backed down and agreed to end its production from 2014 onwards. The decision followed a meeting in Munich between Turkish community leaders and Lego executives. Birol Killic, the president of the TCA, said in a statement: “We are very grateful and congratulate Lego on the decision to take Jabba’s Palace out of production.”

The hypersensitivity and perpetually outraged and offended would point to this as an example of institutionalized cultural racism. For the most part, it’s projectionism of their own insecurities.

I guess any negative characters and the portrayal of bad guys can only be depicted as old white men, lest any special interest group should be offended. Let’s not portray any terrorists as having any connection whatsoever to the Middle East or Islam. Terrorists can only be portrayed if they are white westerners, because that won’t offend anyone.

The slug-like crime-boss, Jabba the Hutt, is far from attractive. Should fat people be offended? Any couch potatoes out there have their feelings hurt by seeing a little of their physical selves embodied in Jabba? How insecure in your own skin must you be to think that Jabba smoking a hookah is somehow a negative stereotype against Indians/Persians/Arabs/Middle Eastern culture?

A statement posted on the organisation’s website refers to Jabba the Hutt as a ‘terrorist’ and says that he ‘likes to smoke hookah and have his victims killed’.

It adds: ‘It is clear that the ugly figure of Jabba and the whole scene smacks of racial prejudice and vulgar insinuations against Asians and Orientals as people with deceitful and criminal personalities.’

The statement says that the figures in the set are made to resemble ‘terrorists, criminals and murderers’.

Referring to weapons contained in the set, the statement suggests that the ‘combination of temple building and bunker facilities where shots are fired cannot be appropriate for children between 9 and 14 years old’.

It concludes: ‘One would expect more empathy and responsibility from a manufacturer of toys that has produced toys and models that are good for teaching for decades.’

In regards to the Hagia Sophia and anti-weapons sentiment, this blogger points out:

I’m not quite sure where this group has been for the last thirty years, since Lego didn’t invent Jabba’s Palace. Also, Jabba’s not a terrorist but rather a criminal kingpin, a truly important distinction.

Is Jabba’s Palace modeled after the Hagia Sophia? Maybe. Movie production designers often take their initial cues from real world structures, and the Hagia Sophia’s dome is quite beautiful. It’s one of the most important architectural milestones in history. What’s interesting is that the Hagia Sophia, which is now a museum but was once a mosque, was actually built as an Orthodox basilica, so it isn’t an example of Islamic architecture. I bring that up because many of the English-language articles I’ve read have made a big deal of this being a religious issue, with claims that the Turkish group was upset that an Islamic holy place was being used as the model for a criminal den.

But from the mangled Google translation of what I believe to be the original statement, it seems to me that the problems the group have are largely based on the inclusion of weapons in the set – they call it a war toy. They also obviously have racial issues, as seen in the quote above, but it’s the weapons that bother them the most.