Fantastic Racism/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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  • In Underworld and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the two races of immortals, vampire and werewolf spend entire centuries killing each other over a grudge. The vampires are more typically racist, calling the Lycans (werewolves) animals and vermin and generally hunting them to the brink of extinction. In the feudal era, the vampires kept the Lycans as slaves and pets to guard them during daylight hours. The lead vampire killed his own daughter because she fell in love with a werewolf and carried his child.
  • In Willow, the Daikini (humans) call the Neldwyn (Hobbits with the serial numbers filed off) "pecks" in a clearly offensive way. "Daikini" itself seems to be a mildly offensive term.
  • Humans themselves are subjected to Fantastic Racism in Titan A.E., as the movie takes place 15 years after an Earthshattering Kaboom, and what humans remain are penniless, homeless, and generally reviled by the other species.
  • Matt Sykes of Alien Nation has a black partner (they're cops) at the beginning of the story but refers to the alien Newcomers as "slags" before he's been told that his new partner will be a Newcomer. Of course, by the end Matt has been converted.
  • Xenophobia is a major theme of the 1953 movie It Came from Outer Space, as the aliens believe their hideous appearance will inevitably lead to conflict with humanity.
  • In Pleasantville, when people and places start turning color, a backlash movement starts to keep Pleasantville "pleasant" and Deliberately Monochrome. This involves hanging signs saying "NO COLOREDS" and starting anti-color riots. It even features a courtroom scene that references the one in To Kill a Mockingbird, with the residents of color segregated to the balconies.
  • Done in the at least one version of The Wind in the Willows. At Toad's trial, the judge gives him an extra twelve months' imprisonment for being green.
  • Seen in the Wing Commander movie, against Pilgrims (humans mutated by radiation).
    • This has more to do with the fact that the Pilgrims went to war with the rest of humanity before the Human-Kilrathi War.
  • District 9, about aliens stranded in Johannesburg, never mentions The Apartheid Era. It doesn't need to, what with the repressed "Prawns" relegated to filthy, crime-ridden slums, barely allowed rights, and treated with institutional prejudice.
    • The short film that District 9 is based on, Alive In Joburg, did mention that the government of Johannesburg used the existing apartheid laws of South Africa in order to segregate the alien population.
    • Although according to the South African writer, the movie itself wasn't intended as an apartheid allegory, just as a what-if story about aliens in South Africa. To people outside the country it may look like some sort of profound statement, but to those of us who are from here, it's more like an extrapolation of the everyday (especially given all the problems there have been with illegal immigrants and some of our citizens' excessively violent "solution" to the problem). Kind of like how Independence Day is just an alien invasion movie in America, rather than some sort of deep social commentary about the nature of American democracy.
  • Cats Don't Dance is pretty much about the discrimination black actors faced in Hollywood during the late 30s/early 40s...but with ANIMALS!
    • In fact, one review called it the movie for people who thought the racial overtones in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? were too subtle.
  • The speciesist squirrel in Once Upon a Forest.
  • An American Tail is an obvious one, the mice represent the oppressed elasticities of the world and the cats represent their oppressors.
  • James Cameron's Avatar is a perfect example of this. The Na'vi and the humans are very racist towards each other. To be fair, the humans stop short of Na'vi genocide. Although that may simply be due to the fact that the RDA is a corporation, not a military, and genocide is terrible PR. Subverted as not all humans are racist towards the Na'vi. Dr. Grace and her colleagues highly sympathize with the Na'vi people and are even willing to learn their culture. And there are some humans who are allowed to stay in Pandora after the Na'vi kicked the RDA army's asses. And there some humans who even adapt their culture and literally become one of them, like Jake Sully
    • The Na'Vi themselves are not exempt from this, as some of them frequently disparage Humans.
  • In Blade Runner, we have humans using 'replicants', who are seen as Just a Machine. The racism aspect comes in when one of the characters refers to replicants as 'skin-jobs'. In one of the editions, a lampshade is hung on this, with the protagonist comparing him to the type of cop who used to call a black person a nigger.
  • The first The Land Before Time movie contains plenty of Fantastic Racism between the different species of dinosaurs. The "races," stay in their own groups at the movie's start, these being the Long Necks, the Three Horns, the Swimmers, the Fliers, and the Spike Tails just to name those of the main Five-Man Band. Most, if not all, of the Fantastic Racism is gone by the movie's end, when all of the dinosaurs, sans Sharptooth, are living in the Great Valley in peace.
    • This shows up in the sequels as well. In every single one, Cera's (the threehorn) father forgets the 'racism is bad' Aesop and tries to blame the new problem on anyone and everyone else. The plot enfolds, and by the end he repents for being such a jerk...until the next time. There is also a saccharine song called "It Takes All Sorts" on the subject.
  • The soviet socio-political satire film Kin-Dza-Dza features this based entirely on whether a device pointed at someone shows a green light or an orange light, dividing them between "patsaks" and "chatlanians", the planet that most of the movie is set on is owned by the chatlanians and so the patsaks need to wear a bell clipped to their nose, squat in front of anyone who is higher than them in society and perform in cages. Add this to the fact that they have absolutely no rights and you have the basis for a near perfect example of this trope.
    • It also should be noted that, unlike many other examples on this page, patsaks weren't portrayed as being any better then chatlanians. On planets that belong to patsaks chatlanians have it exactly as bad as patsaks do on theirs.
  • Star Wars has a few examples:
    • Droids, while apparently sentient, are clearly treated like second-class citizens at best and chattel slaves at worst. At the end of A New Hope, C-3P0 and R2-D2 are clearly shown excluded from the awards ceremony. Also, the barman at the Catina hates droids. While some people have pointed out that droids would just take up space in a dining establishment, the barman clearly states, "We don't serve their kind here," and "We don't want them," suggesting that he was deliberately withholding some sort of potential service.
      • It is explained in the EU that the Empire would use droids to spy on the bar patrons, making it impossible to carry out their dealings; hence the ban on droids.
      • It may also be because of the Clone Wars.
    • The Empire is practically this incarnate and also has Fantastic Chauvinism. They not only hate aliens, but specifically developed a virus to kill them in the most graphic, painful, and brutal way possible. They bomb planets for the most minor of offenses, reduced the planet of Topwara to barbarism because they aided the Rebellion, blew up Alderaan and tried to frame the Rebels for it, and oh so much more throughout the EU. They even have their own policy focused around racism, NhM, or Non-huMan. Grand Admiral Thrawn, one of its best tacticians, had to be allowed to get into the Navy by the Emperor himself, and that was only because of his tactical genius.
  • While never stated outright, the Muppets seem to be social minorities and outcasts in many of their movies in contrast to the usually successful and exclusive human societies.
    • Of course, this could just be because their variety show, while entertaining to us, is considered inept within their fictional universe. And even with that, popular human celebrities were (almost) always thrilled to be appearing on their show, and rarely seemed to notice that the Muppets were not human.
  • In Predators, its revealed that the "Classic" Predators are hunted by the larger, more aggressive newer Predators. One of the classic Predators is kept chained up as a prisoner in the Predator camp, and combats the leader of the new Predators when released, but is killed.
  • In Brother From Another Planet, an escaped alien slave who looks like a black man is pursued by two of his own kind, who look like white men. It turns out that the aliens are actually oblivious to the slave's skin color. They enslaved him because he's got three toes.
  • In the Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the Fallen's only apparent reason for wanting to destroy Earth and starting the war that destroyed his homeworld was a general and strong hatred for humanity. Considering on his first encounter they were as dangerous to him as ants are to humans, one can only wonder.
    • Megatron on the other hand, has a more justifiable reason. He was kept frozen for centuries, and his body was poked, prodded and studied by the guys at Sector 7, in order to help create modern technology, whilst referring to him with the demeaning acronym of "N. B. E.-01". And apparently, he was conscious the entire time this was happening.
    • Transformers: Dark of the Moon plays the Fantastic Racism up more than the previous films, with the Decepticons planning on enslaving the human race to rebuild Cybertron.
  • Played for laughs in Jim Henson's Hey, Cinderella!. For some unspecified reason, no one but Cinderella and the prince are willing to listen to frogs. This means that poor Kermit spends the entire movie trying to clear up the misunderstandings, only to be ignored. The king also makes frogs the only exception to his proclamation that everyone in the kingdom is invited to the ball, and we later see that frogs aren't allowed to give testimony. We're also told that Cinderella's dog Rufus is unable to testify that she's telling the truth, but that might be justified as a dog being biased in favor of its owner.
  • In Thor, this is played with regarding Asgardians and Jotsuns. Odin harbours no prejudice towards the Frost Giants even adopting Loki, a Frost Giant by birth. Oddly, Loki thinks destroying the entire Jotsun race would please his father.
  • In the Japanese version of Pokémon the First Movie, Mew believed that all clones are inferior to the originals and should die because of this. The dub changed it into a speech about how real strength comes from the heart.
  • In Blade, pureblood vampires treat people who have been turned into vampires with disdain.
    • This forms some of the plot of both the original film and the TV series. Both Frost and Van Sciver are turned-bloods and are forced to bow down before the purebloods. At least Frost is open about his disdain for them, thinking that they're stuck in the old ways, ignoring the modern world. Van Sciver always shows them reverence, while cursing them behind closed doors. With Van Sciver, at least, a plausible explanation for this is the death of his wife and his forcible turning at the hands of a pureblood.
  • In Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, toons aren't allowed in certain clubs (despite being the main performers), Eddie has a slight dislike for toons after one killed his brother, and when Roger is accused of murder, he potentially faces execution without any chance of a fair trial. Judge Doom also outright murders a toon shoe that had literally committed no crime at all, and gets away scot-free.