Carl Sagan Tells Johnny Carson What’s Wrong with Star Wars: “They’re All White” & There’s a “Large Amount of Human Chauvinism in It” (1978)

Is Star Wars sci­ence fic­tion or fan­ta­sy? Dif­fer­ent fans make dif­fer­ent argu­ments, some even opt­ing for a third way, claim­ing that the ever-mul­ti­ply­ing sto­ries of its ever-expand­ing fic­tion­al uni­verse belong to nei­ther genre. Back in 1978, the year after the release of the orig­i­nal Star Wars film (which no one then called “A New Hope,” let alone “Episode Four”), the ques­tion was approached by no less a pop­u­lar sci­en­tif­ic per­son­al­i­ty than Carl Sagan. It hap­pened on nation­al tele­vi­sion, as the astronomer, cos­mol­o­gist, writer, and tele­vi­sion host in his own right sat oppo­site John­ny Car­son. “The eleven-year-old in me loved them,” Sagan says in the clip above of Star Wars, Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind, and oth­er then-recent space-themed block­busters. “But they could’ve made a bet­ter effort to do things right.”

Every­one remem­bers how Star Wars sets its stage: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” But right there, Sagan has a prob­lem. Despite its remote­ness from us, this galaxy hap­pens also to be pop­u­lat­ed by human beings, “the result of a unique evo­lu­tion­ary sequence, based upon so many indi­vid­u­al­ly unlike­ly, ran­dom events on the Earth.”

So Homo sapi­ens could­n’t have evolved on any oth­er plan­et, Car­son asks, let alone one in anoth­er galaxy? “It’s extreme­ly unlike­ly that there would be crea­tures as sim­i­lar to us as the dom­i­nant ones in Star Wars.” He goes on to make a more spe­cif­ic cri­tique, one pub­li­cized again in recent years as ahead of its time: “They’re all white.” That is, in the skins of most of the movie’s char­ac­ters, “not even the oth­er col­ors rep­re­sent­ed on the Earth are present, much less greens and blues and pur­ples and oranges.”

Car­son responds, as any­one would, by bring­ing up Star Wars’ can­ti­na scene, with its rogue’s gallery of var­i­ous­ly non-humanoid habitués. “But none of them seemed to be in charge of the galaxy,” Sagan points out. “Every­body in charge of the galaxy seemed to look like us. I thought there was a large amount of human chau­vin­ism in it.” That no medal is bestowed upon Chew­bac­ca, despite his hero­ics, Sagan declares an exam­ple of “anti-Wook­iee dis­crim­i­na­tion” — with tongue in cheek, grant­ed, but point­ing up how much more inter­est­ing sci­ence fic­tion could be if it relied a lit­tle less on human con­ven­tions and drew a lit­tle more from sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies. Not that Star Wars is nec­es­sar­i­ly sci­ence fic­tion. “It was a shootout, was­n’t it?” Car­son asks. “A West­ern in out­er space.” John­ny nev­er did hes­i­tate to call ’em as he saw ’em.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fans Recon­struct Authen­tic Ver­sion of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in The­aters in 1977

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Carl Sagan on the Impor­tance of Choos­ing Wise­ly What You Read (Even If You Read a Book a Week)

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.