I’ve recently watched the first Guardian of the Galaxy for the first time in one of my script-structure classes. After the film, the professor truly stressed how well the movie dealt with friendship, which I agree, and how it dealt with race.
The reason the professor gave for the latter was that the main character, a white heterosexual male, was sleeping with women of different color skin from him so this showed that he wasn’t racist. As a Latina, I found myself strongly disagreeing with him under this aspect. I found that the movie failed to, first of all, set the racial politics in this world among individuals populating it. Some of them feel like they are entitled to be racist and misogynist towards other individuals of different color and gender as them. However, I didn’t get a sense of what was the predominant race in that world, and which was the marginalized one. There were only random racial insults, which to me didn’t really feel motivated nor made much sense. Moreover, I didn’t really pick up on the good heart of Chris Pratt’s character, as not being racist should be normality, not something to be praised for. Lastly, I feel like, especially towards the end, all colored characters were portrayed as uncontrollable and unreasonable humans that don’t know how to behave civilly.
At the end, when the group is rewarded with the new spaceship, Corpsman Dey expresses his concerns about the bunch of colored people to Star-Lord about the peculiar questions they ask him before boarding the ship. Star-Lord replies, “Don’t worry, I will look after them,” conveying the idea that, once again, the white male needs to control the uncivilized colored people. Lastly, in the closing scene, Star-Lord, asks them, “So, what do we do now?” to which Gamora responds, “We follow your lead, Star-Lord.” This, once again, expresses that, in order for everything to go right, the colored people need to follow the white man’s lead.
This is what I thought watching the film, but I was the one who started this conversation as no one else in the class picked up on this. But they eventually saw what I meant and agreed with me, and also added that there is a gender issue too as the only females present in the movie are mostly pictured as token girls. I’d like to know what you all think about this J
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