Let's Do This Together

The problems on Naboo were deeper than a droid army invasion in Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Their planet was divided. One culture and species above the water, another pushed below. The Gungans are sort of a George Lucas stand-in for an indigenous people, while the human beings of Naboo are like colonial settlers. “The Naboo” came from off-world and ran the Gungans off their land. That’s hundreds of years of galactic history.

By time we get to The Phantom Menace, the Gungans loathe the Naboo and the Naboo mostly just don’t understand the Gungans. It was their ancestors who had conflict with the weird-looking fish people associated with Jar Jar Binks. “Why do they hate us?”

Episode I gives us clues. When the Gungan Leader, Boss Nass, hears the Naboo have been conquered, he snarls. “We don’t care about the Naboo. They think they’re so smart. They think their brains so big.”

It pains me how much I hear this kind of resentment in the real world. I participate in it often, and I have to hold myself accountable when I slip into it. You know what I’m talking about….another group of people who you hold in contempt because you assume they don’t like you or look down on you..