Movie: The Fifth Element (Spoilers)

Another movie, this time courtesy Netflix instant viewing: The Fifth Element.

To be perfectly honest, this one has me pretty pissed off right now. It would have been a perfectly good, if somewhat cliche, movie except for one problem: the fucking racism! Those of you who have seen it are immediately thinking of one character, and he will certainly be addressed very shortly, but let's expand a little beyond that.

First, because it's brief: Where do we see Asians in this movie? It's 300-ish years in the future, there's 200 billion human beings spread across multiple star systems, surely we have some Asian people running around, right? Well, there's one. He's a Chinese cook with a bad accent, dispensing fortune cookie wisdom from a flying junk -- the boat kind. Yeah.

How about Hispanic people? Pfph. You wish.

OK, how about black people? Well, there's the president. This is good. Maybe a little tokenism, but a step. Then there's... a buttload of henchmen and lackeys. In fact, let's think about the human villains we see, and their racial make-up. Who is not black? Well, there's Zorg, the main villain himself. And.... um... I think there might have been two big thugly white guys with no speaking lines. Otherwise, there's at least 4 and maybe up to 6 black guys, and the shape-shifting alien things turn into one black guy and one white guy.
So, basically, greater than 50% of the villain squad are black guys, and yet they get no intelligence or initiative in the operation. Lovely.

And then there's Rudy Rhod, a role that Ru Paul turned down because it was just too over-the-top flaming. This character makes Snails in the Dungeons and Dragons movie look like a sensitive, intelligent, and enlightened portrayal. If you haven't seen the movie, take the brainless incompetent black sidekick character stereotype that should have been laid to rest in the 1970s with much embarrassment, add "drag queen" to the list of offenses, and then kick it up a notch. I really can not express how offensive this character was. What in the world would ever make 1997 Hollywood think this character was even remotely acceptable? I mean, I'm sitting there watching this and finding myself surprised that we don't have more riots, because if you ever wanted walking proof that racism is not not getting any fucking better, there he is.

Sprinkle with a bit of Nazi symbolism -- be sure to get it around the hero -- and there you are.