A Gay Jar Jar in New “Star Wars” Movie?

There’s a stereotypically “gay”-seeming villain in the new CGI Star Wars movie The Clone Wars that is so offensive and over-the-top that you’re left wondering, “Is George Lucas insane?” This is especially true in light of the widespread criticism the man received for characters perceived as racist in The Phantom Menace: the Caribbean simpleton Jar Jar Binks, scheming “Asian menace”-like characters, and stereotypically Jewish-seeming tightwads.

And rest assured, Ziro the Hutt, the gay-seeming character in The Clone Wars, is entirely the work of Lucas himself. Press reports have director Dave Filoni recounting how the character previously sounded completely different, “then George one day was watching it and said ‘I want him to sound like Truman Capote.’”

Hutt sounds exactly like Truman Capote — one of the most famous openly gay men of all time — who spoke with a lisping southern accent. But unlike Capote, Ziro also wears make-up, feathers, jewelry, and is covered in body tattoos. Whenever he appears, it’s in purple shadows with an undertone of languid, sex-infused jazz playing in the background of the nightclub he manages.

He’s also a villain through and through: a scheming traitor willing to kill even a child without thought. But like so many gay-seeming villains before him, he’s also a pathetic coward, losing all dignity at the first hint of the collapse of his nefarious plot.

- from Afterelton