2) Wookie Life Debts
If you're not aware of what a Wookiee life debt is, it's because you have never played a single Star Wars game in your life. Other than light sabers and overly anthropomorphized droids, the Wookiee practice of swearing their life to unwavering service to another person is one of the most common staples of Star Wars gaming. Wookies are represented as incredibly simple and traditional creatures by all Star Wars games. In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic players travel through
Kashyyyk, the jungle home planet of the Wookiees, through a series of awesome wooden tree houses build into the canopy layer of an immense forest. Again in Star Wars Battlefront 2, we are shown that the Wookies prefer to live in wooden, semi-permanent structures with no power. OK, so they're very traditional. They like things the old fashioned way. They also sell each other into slavery. Yep, when they need cash, they just thin the herd a bit and sell someone to the
Czerka Corporation. So, there's that small, less than honorable detail. Wookiees of the planet Kashyyyk have apparently spent their entire existence under one form of slavery or another. In the games of Star Wars alone, Wookiees have been enslaved by each other, Czekra, and the Empire. Expanded fan fiction puts them under the boot of at least three other races. But that in and of itself isn't all that racist. Well, it's a little narrow minded and not very creative to keep giving a culture the exact same problem to deal with. But it isn't straight up racism, yet. That brings us, at last to the Wookiee life debt, a concept that is reminiscent if Elkin's theories of desired slavery. How many Wookiees can you name? Well, most people know Chewbacca, the most famous Wookiee. He was of course, Han Solo's personal Wookiee death machine. It isn't talked about in the movies, but numerous fan fiction (including games) state that Chewie vowed a life debt to Han after Han rescued Chewbacca from slavery. There's also Zaalbar, who swears a life debt to the player in Knights of the Old Republic after you rescue him from slavery. If you play as a smuggler in Star Wars: the Old Republic, you rescue Bowdaar from slavery (noticing a trend?). He of course doesn't swear a life debt, but he does swear to follow you to whatever goal you may pursue. And of course Hanharr in Knights of the Old Republic 2, who was trying to kill Mira, because he owed her a life debt (let's just say slavery was involved), and then later swore one to Kreia like the life debt slut that he clearly is. In case you aren't seeing the pattern, let me lay it out. Wookiees, according to licensed and authorized fiction, are a race of furry beasts who live life just waiting to either be forcefully enslaved by outsiders (Czerka and the Empire amongst others) or swear voluntary oaths of slavery to a person, presumably for rescuing from slavery. In essence, Wookiees are born into a culture of desired slavery. And who are those people that are the benefactors of this super helpful cultural proclivity? Human males, mostly. The empire is a painfully obvious representation of a male dominated Arian society. In more recent games women are beginning to appear in Imperial positions, but still rarely. Czerka, in all games in which it is present, is an almost exclusively human group. And finally Han Solo, who is the definition of human manliness. You'll notice that the above examples are all Role Playing Games. That is no coincidence, as any
quick search on the internet will provide proof that there are plenty of folks out there who want to play out a slave/master relationship in a safe environment. Luckily, as long as there's money in Star Wars based fiction, there will be a place for us to live out the fantasy of owning a sentient life form.