Jar Jar Binks

Jar Jar Binks (born c. 50 BBY) is a fictional character in the Star Wars films The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. His primary role was intended to provide comic relief — based on his gangly way of walking and his unique accent. Jar Jar was voiced by Ahmed Best. He is almost completely computer-generated. Although he was played on set by a costumed Best, Best was usually edited out and replaced by the animated character, except in some close-up shots where his face is not visible.

The creation and modeling of Jar Jar Binks marked the first time that such a highly detailed, photo-realistic CGI character had interacted with live actors in a motion picture. Director George Lucas and his effects team were quick to hail this as a major technical breakthrough, but the controversy surrounding the character has to some extent overshadowed his importance to the development of movie special effects.

Jar Jar Binks is a 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) tall Gungan, with long ears and eyes mounted on stalks, and he resembles an anthropomorphized platypus crossed with an amphibian or a hadrosaurus.

Story

Episode I

Banished from his childhood home for his clumsiness, the naïve Jar Jar is first encountered while living in the swamps of Naboo. In the events of The Phantom Menace, Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn and his Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi arrive on Naboo, ending up in the swamps rather than the intended destination of the capital.

Qui-Gon saves Jar Jar's life as the Trade Federation's droid army advance on Theed and in the aftermath Jar Jar explains that, thanks to the principle of a "Gungan Life Debt", he is obligated to stay by Qui-Gon's side until he dies. Jar Jar is later arrested by troops loyal to Boss Nass when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan visit Otoh Gunga, and Qui-Gon uses the excuse of this 'Life Debt' to free Jar Jar from Nass' custody.

Jar Jar travels with Qui-Gon's party to Tatooine and later Coruscant. It is on the latter planet that he informs Padmé Amidala that the Gungans have a 'Grand Army' (a term significant later in the Star Wars series - see Grand Army of the Republic), a contributory factor in her decision to return to Naboo and contest the Trade Federation's invasion militarily. After Qui-Gon and his party's return to Naboo, Jar Jar is instrumental in Padmé's brokering a deal with the Gungans for a joint attack on the Trade Federation's occupation forces, leading her and her allies to the Gungans' underwater hiding place.

Jar Jar took part in the Battle of Naboo, playing a key role after being given the rank of Bombad General in the Gungan Grand Army by Boss Nass, with whom he was now reconciled.

Jar Jar provides instances of comic relief throughout the movie, including a number of comical battle scenes. For instance, Jar Jar inadvertently sends a cascading wave of Boomas into a group of battle droids which destroys a large number of Trade Federation troops.

Episode II

In Attack of the Clones, Jar Jar has much less screen time but plays a pivotal, although substantially different, role in the narrative. He is portrayed as an idealistic politician who, like Padmé, represents the peoples of the planet of Naboo in the Galactic Senate. Addressed as "Representative Binks," he is a member of The Loyalist Committee, referred to early in the film and is later deputized by Padmé Amidala in the Galactic Senate. He is manipulated by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and his allies into proposing a bill that would give Palpatine emergency executive powers on the ostensible grounds that this is what Padmé Amidala would have done had she been present during the debates. Jar Jar's decision sets the Clone Wars in motion. These powers enable Palpatine to order the creation of the Grand Army of the Republic and implicitly, but obviously, mark the beginning of Palpatine's gathering of authority towards his own office and person, ultimately leading to the dissolution of the Republic and its reformation as the Galactic Empire in Revenge of the Sith. In terms of Star Wars' political content, this thread can be seen as demonstrating how good people can be innocently dragged along by events and even manipulated into playing a role in matters with which they do not agree by the machinations of other, more sophisticated and cynical persons.

Episode III

In Revenge of the Sith, Jar Jar has only a cameo. He reportedly had a total of fifteen words in two lines in the script, and thirteen of these were cut out. In Revenge of the Sith, Jar Jar is only seen three times (most noticeably walking solemnly in Padmé Amidala's funeral procession at the end of the film, along with Boss Nass). He has no speaking part at all except in one scene (near the beginning of the film, after Anakin and Obi-Wan land with Palpatine, and as the senators file behind him, Jar Jar gets in the way of the obese Senator Orn Free Taa and says a brief "Excuse me"). Deleted scenes from the movie, available on the DVD, portray him as a member of the Delegation of 2000, a Senatorial committee dedicated to democracy - indicating he has learned from his mistake in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and is attempting, albeit unsuccessfully, to rectify it.

Fate

Rumors as to a depiction of his ultimate fate (or rather, lack thereof) proliferated when the 2004 DVD version of Episode VI - Return of the Jedi was released, featuring a newly added shot of Naboo in the celebration montage featuring a distant Gungan standing atop a pillar who shouts "Wesa free!" The official Star Wars website's character databank file on Jar Jar, however, does not list Return of the Jedi as one of his appearances, while Gungans are thus listed, suggesting that a conscious distinction may have been made.

This topic of disagreement, however, within fandom has been largely put to rest recently as George Lucas has personally stated that the Gungan in question is not Jar Jar. He has also debunked the rumor that Jar Jar perished on Alderaan when it was destroyed by the Death Star in A New Hope. The most recent claim is that Jar Jar returned to Coruscant and served in the Imperial Senate and eventually settled down with a family, presumably dying of old age. According to Lucasfilm's official system, this is regarded as G-canon.

Controversy

Upon the release of The Phantom Menace, Jar Jar Binks became the subject of a great deal of media and popular attention, though not in the way his creators intended. Binks became symbolic of what many thought were the inherent creative and critical flaws of the film. The character was even widely rejected and often ridiculed by sections of the series' hardcore fanbase, who felt that Jar Jar was clearly included in the film solely to appeal to children. In part, his character clashed with the expectations of some fans, who perceived the earlier films in the series as having a more adult tone.

It is commonly argued that Jar Jar is simply a marketing gimmick designed to sell memorabilia, and shows a cynical turn in Lucas' epic. Similar charges were leveled at the appearance of the teddy bear-like Ewoks in 1983's Return of the Jedi.

Many fans object to any portrayal of excessive cuteness in the Star Wars series. Lucas has himself stated that he feels there is a section of the fanbase who get upset with aspects of Star Wars because "The movies are for children but they don't want to admit that... There is a group of fans that doesn't like comic sidekicks. They want the films to be tough like The Terminator, and they get very upset and opinionated about anything that has anything to do with being childlike."

Jar Jar is a character designed to appeal to children who did not appeal to an adolescent market, i.e. he did not appeal to a group he was not designed to appeal to. Whether or not he appealed to the group he was designed for is a separate issue.

Racism

Some of the more serious charges against Jar Jar (and consequently against Lucas, his creator) suggest that he is a modern incarnation of racist stereotypes used as comic relief in many motion pictures of the first half of the 20th century. Many aspects of Jar Jar's character are believed to be highly reminiscent of the archetypes portrayed in Blackface Minstrelsy Patricia J. Williams: , a theater form prevalent during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Jar Jar's bodily expressions and tendency to get into trouble have also been said to remind many of Stepin Fetchit and other similar offensive (Black) stereotypical characters that persisted after the general demise of Blackface.

Jar Jar's dialect has been argued to sound stereotypically like Jamaican English. Best is clearly not speaking this actual real world dialect in the film and the scale of the resemblance is disputed. Lucas spoke about these issues on British television in 1999. Interviewed by Kirsty Wark on the BBC's political review programme Newsnight on 14 July of that year, he countered that criticisms of Jar Jar's mode of speaking were "...made by people who've obviously never met a Jamaican, because it's definitely not Jamaican and if you were to say those lines in Jamaican they wouldn't be anything like the way Jar Jar Binks says them." The similarity between the names "Jar Jar" and "Jah Jah" seems to support the theory of connection between Jar Jar Binks and Jamaicans, because the name is used to refer to Haile Selassie I in the primarily black Rastafari religion, and has recently become a popular name for God the Father and Jesus among young Christian Jamaicans.

It can be argued that any resemblance comes from a confluence of Best's own voice and the "broken" English the character speaks. In support of this it can be pointed out that the other Gungans featured in the movie speak in the same manner, and use the same disputed phrases, but their accents (such as that of English actor Brian Blessed) do not create the same accidental semiotic link in some audience members' minds. Also, in his Newsnight interview, Lucas seemed astonished by this area of controversy and commented, "How in the world you could take an orange amphibian and say that he's a Jamaican? It's completely absurd. Believe me, Jar Jar was not drawn from a Jamaican, from any stretch of the imagination."

Jar Jar is not the only character in The Phantom Menace whose accent has been used to generate controversy. Notably, detractors claim, the greedy Trade Federation spoke with East Asian accents (French accents in the German version). These allegations are controversial and not universally agreed upon. A maximum of one of four speaking Trade Federation representatives can be even contended to speak in East Asian manner. Other fans have pointed out that Jar Jar's voice and accent simply have a "nails on chalkboard" quality to them.

The plot thread in the latter two prequel films which concern Jar Jar's manipulation by other political elements and the manner in which his innocence betrays him (leading him to inadvertently cause the undoing of the Galactic Republic) has been interpreted by some as a shift in significance and character emphasis initiated by Lucas in response to the criticism he received originally. Other commentators contend that this shift was most likely planned far in advance and was always intended as a comment on, and re-contextualisation of, Jar Jar's role in The Phantom Menace by the series' creator.

As a result of all of the controversy above, Jar Jar has been one of the major springboards for vehement anti-Lucas sentiment, aka Lucas Bashing.

Trivia

In the special features of the film Requiem for a Dream, Marlon Wayans can be seen imitating Jar Jar Binks between takes, obviously finding the portrayal offensive.
The character was inspired and named by Lucas' youngest daughter.
Ahmed Best was cast as Jar Jar after casting director Robin Gurland saw how loose and lanky he was during a performance of musical group STOMP.
The Jar Jar CGI model was the basis for all of the Gungans.
Jar Jar also has a notable literary antecedent. The character Gunga Din, in the 1939 movie of the same name, based on the poem by Rudyard Kipling was an Indian "water boy" for the British army who comically tried to imitate the British soldiers but in the end saved the day by blowing a horn to summon assistance in the middle of an attack. The fact that Jar Jar is called a Gungan, and that another Gungan blows a horn to start a battle where his people help save the day, both suggest that he is intended as an homage to Gunga Din. It is worth remembering in this context that the most famous line of Kipling's poem is the valedictory "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."
A hoax began circulating the internet in 1999 about a Jar Jar Binks cartoon called "Jar Jar Racers". This hoax was popularized by Ain't It Cool News ^*, which erroneously reported it as fact.
Jar Jar's catchphrase of "How rude!", is a direct lift from C-3P0's line in The Empire Strikes Back.

Notes

External links

Jar Jar Binks in the StarWars.com Databank
Jar Jar's Cottage - A pro-Jar Jar site
Death to Jar Jar Homepage - A Jar Jar hate site.
Star Wars Episode I in the Internet Movie Database
Ahmed Best at the Internet Movie Database

Star Wars Old Republic characters | CGI characters

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