digitalmirth:

digitalmirth:

You know what else I really love about the diversity in Rogue One? The presence and non-issue of Diego Luna’s accent. Prior to Cassian (at least in my memory) if a Star Wars character had an accent other than English/American then they were an alien or otherwise a foreign or aberrant being. Not a single character in Rogue One signals that they can’t understand Cassian, or corrects his pronunciation, nor does anyone ever point it out or even justify his accent by saying he is from whatever planet. The film therefore implicitly takes place in a world where accents don’t mark someone’s otherness; accents aren’t a marker of un-education, illiteracy, or being an outsider. Granted the issue of nations and countries is a little loopy in Star Wars, but Rogue One presents to us a universe where some people just don’t speak the common tongue the way everyone else does and there’s no stigma attached to that, they are as much of a rebel as anyone else.

I’ve read time and time again, and experienced time and time again, that a foreign accent is everything in the way people perceive you. People are more likely to think you are stupid, untrustworthy, or just downright confusing. Even if an immigrant in the United States has been living here for 40 years, if they have an accent, everything is going to start working against them. That’s why so many immigrants fret over their English and go to accent reduction classes or avoid speaking in public too often. Because no matter who you are, as soon as you open your mouth, people think of you as a joke. No matter how smart, how patriotic, how hardworking you may be, your otherness is always spelt right there on your own tongue.

You’ve heard it a million times and here is a million and one: representation matters y'all. I was born in this country so I don’t have a Spanish accent, but my whole family does. My whole community does. I happen to live in an area heavy with Latinxs so here the stigma isn’t so obvious, but I’ve seen this kind of discrimination happen to Latinxs all over the country while I get to keep the privilege of the facade of whiteness because of my natural American accent. So I’m goddamn elated that Diego Luna performed Cassian in a unabashed Mexican Spanish accent in a mainstream film and it did not have a single repercussion on his character except for making millions of Latinx feel validates for they way they express themselves. My whole life, pronouncing Star Wars “Estar Wahrs” has been deemed the incorrect way. And now, it’s one of of many, equally valid ways. Amen to that.

Lol some people commenting on this with “Estar Guars” and you’re totally right; that just reveals my spanglish Miami self… I literally spent like 5 minutes trying to figure out how to transliterate the W (it’s not native to Spanish) before giving up 😂😂