• I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
    233·
    8 days ago

    I remember when Star Wars wasn’t political. It was a time known as “the movie didn’t even exist back then”.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    139·
    8 days ago

    Don’t make Star Wars political… Except the rebels want to restore a democracy in the Original Trilogy…

    And in the prequels we have literal political scenes, as written and directed by Lucas himself.

    • auntieclokwise@lemmy.worldEnglish
      62·
      8 days ago

      And the Andor series is literally a class on fascism. Things presented there are inspired by real world events. The second season in particular makes it REALLY clear. You literally have the Empire conspiring with media to produce propaganda to undermine the Ghorman people so the Empire can come in and steal the planet’s resources and kill the people. Then the Empire stages a massacre and uses it as further propaganda

      • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        In something like 45 years and countless movies, TV shows and various other forms of media, Andor is really the first one that actually takes on the politics of the Star Wars universe. As someone said, it makes all the other Star Wars shows seem like someone playing with their action figures.

    • Prunebutt@slrpnk.netEnglish
      23·
      8 days ago

      Except the rebels want to restore a democracy in the Original Trilogy.

      Technically, it’s never stated which form of government (if any) the rebellion wants to create after the empire is gone.

      • Schmoo@slrpnk.netEnglish
        2·
        8 days ago

        I’ve only seen Andor so I don’t know if the lore was stated or implied in the original trilogy, but aren’t the rebellion an alliance of multiple revolutionary groups with different ideas for what comes after, but more broadly want to restore the Republic?

        • Prunebutt@slrpnk.netEnglish
          2·
          8 days ago

          Andor was more poliyical than anything before in Star Wars. And even there, they had anarchists. (But yeah, they lean towards the system that got them the empire)

          • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            7 days ago

            I mean, that system did last for a thousand years before the Empire came about, and a broadly similar system lasted for thousands more before that. Restoring the Republic doesn’t mean restoring it to the same state it was in immediately before it fell.

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      To be fair, even though the movies use words like “Empire” and “Rebels” the political world building in the first movie is paper thin. The focus is really on the boy becoming a hero, on having a big adventure. The empire is powerful and looks scary, but we never get into the actual system of government, and at no point do the rebels ever say they want to restore democracy. They just want to take down the empire.

      It has always seemed to me like George Lucas painted himself into many corners with the first movie because he didn’t actually think about what these throw-away references meant. Like, people latched onto the term “The Clone Wars”, but I don’t think he ever thought about what that actually meant, other than some words that sounded cool together.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        7 days ago

        “The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.”

        • Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, moments before starting the board meeting.

        So we do get some glimpse into the state of government and how it’s been degraded. And then it’s not too far a stretch to figure what the Rebels are fighting for.

        • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          22·
          7 days ago

          then it’s not too far a stretch to figure what the Rebels are fighting for.

          A theocracy under the Jedi religion?

            • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              6 days ago

              Christianity is much older and more mysterious than recent events, but a lot of people want to make the USA a christian theocracy.

              • Tattorack@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                6 days ago

                And it has also been worshiped constantly. There has been no event in the past where all of Christianity suddenly disappeared.

                Also, since the translation of the Bible from Latin to common languages back in the Middle Ages, Christianity has become a whole lot less mysterious. It’s not mysterious today, it’s mundane.

                The way A New Hope portrays Jedi (by the way characters talk about it), it sounds like Jedi have been a dying breed for a very long time, perhaps centuries, and now there’s just Obiwan and Vader. Turns out it was only a generation ago, and the reason why people consider it mysterious and distant is because nobody in the Galaxy has been exposed to Jedi as we the viewers have.

  • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    87·
    8 days ago

    Clearly it was a Star Special Military Operation, the emperor wouldn’t just go around starting wars

  • Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    56·
    7 days ago

    I know bigots will be bigots but it really annoys me that they blindly think being queer is political but need proof that war is political.

    • lobut@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      7 days ago

      I dunno, I’m kinda tired hearing, “as long as they can justify why they’re there it’s fine”.

      Great, so happy to justify my existence. I’m assuming the straight male doesn’t have that problem anywhere though right? They just belong everywhere right?

      • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        8 days ago

        Also, ironically, he means “I was being sarcastic”, not “I was being ironic”.

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      101·
      8 days ago

      Got to love how this douche nozzle completely forgets that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon fucking existed and what they were responsible for. (that’s not even mentioning that fuckstick Henry Killmonger)

      Oh yeah, there’s no chance that Lucas could have been thinking of America as the evil empire back in 1975… 🙄😒

      What a twat

    • Comet79@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      8 days ago

      Fr? I always had the impression that the Empire was somewhat inspired by Nazi Germany and the rebels were the resistance. Some of the helmets imperials wear in SW are kinda sus.

    • JigglySackles@lemmy.worldEnglish
      63·
      8 days ago

      I think when it comes to text people need to just include something to denote sarcasm or irony. You can’t read tone properly in text. Books can add color in the form of adjectives but outside of silliness we don’t add something like “he/she quipped sarcastically” into our own comments.

      I think full adoption of the /s would be prudent for online discussions and comments with people that don’t know you personally.

      Although it would be hilarious to add “I said, dripping with sarcasm” to the end of statements.

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        71·
        7 days ago

        You don’t need tone for sarcasm, because it can be inferred from context. Check out British (“dry”) sarcasm.

        Announcing your sarcasm is like explaining your joke. If you need to do it, you’ve failed, and it falls flat. At that point, it’s better to just not be sarcastic in the first place.

        • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlEnglish
          22·
          6 days ago

          You don’t need tone for sarcasm, because it can be inferred from context. Check out British (“dry”) sarcasm.

          you’re being sarcastic here, right? /s

        • Senal@programming.devEnglish
          3·
          7 days ago

          There can be vast differences in reading comprehension and contextual tone recognition.

          As an easy example think of the many degrees of neurodivergency.

          Secondly, British sarcasm and indeed a lot of British communication in general comes from the intention to be deliberately vague, so as to bake plausible deniability in to the responses given.

          It can be inferred, but it’s not a guarantee.

          That being said this guy seems to just be a prick trying to walk back something that blew up in his face.

        • bountygiver [any]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          7 days ago

          If you want to act like a dumbass even ironically, you don’t get to be mad at people treating you like a dumbass

        • JigglySackles@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          7 days ago

          I’m quite familiar. And in plain text it’s often lost on those that would benefit from understanding it. In some contexts it doesn’t matter. In others it does. Sometimes clarity is more important than whether or not it falls flat.

    • not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      20·
      8 days ago

      Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.

      sounds way too familiar 😭

  • clifmo@programming.devEnglish
    41·
    7 days ago

    Star Wars is not exactly subtle or full of nuance. It’s pulp, and it wears that badge with unironic, cinematic pride.

    ​It is the spiritual successor to the 1930s Saturday morning serials of bold archetypes, primary-colored morality, and breakneck pacing where the stakes are always “the fate of the galaxy” and the villains wear literal black masks. It doesn’t ask you to deconstruct the socioeconomic subtext of a spice mine.

  • ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    39·
    8 days ago

    Wow. I had to go verify this and sure enough, I found a video from 7 years ago where Lucas said this and much more including comparing the American Empire to the Galactic Empire. Wow. I missed that reference as a child.

  • Soup@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    8 days ago

    It also just boils down to “stop showing me how what I want is what the bad guys always want.” People on the right side of history love “political” things.

    • bizarroland@lemmy.worldEnglish
      353·
      8 days ago

      I don’t know if George Lucas was meaning to tap into parallelisms with the Vietnam War with the original Star Wars movie.

      I mean, the plot follows the Campbellian “Hero with 1000 faces” storyline to a T.

      But I also acknowledge that the Vietnam War was a major event that was going on when he was writing it and filming it, so it most likely had influence at the very least, but I believe it can be argued that Lucas was not attempting to insinuate the Empire was the United States at that time.

      At the same time, though, I can see a very clear slant in the storyline that an independent society has every right to consider themselves heroes when going up against a larger, seemingly indomitable force that is doing evil while proclaiming themselves to be the good.

            • auntieclokwise@lemmy.worldEnglish
              12·
              8 days ago

              Yeah, I don’t know how Disney greenlight Andor, given that they haven’t exactly been especially anti fascist in their real world politics. Though I will give them a very small credit for keeping Jimmy Kimmel on (albeit after public pushback, which is why they get very little credit).

              Actually, that’s not the only surprising thing they greenlight recently. Apparently the concept for Zootopia was basically stolen. The writer sued and lost (those sorts of cases are really hard to win). But the plot of Zootopia 2 appears to be basically an apology. See: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/zootopia-exposed-part-one . How Disney legal let that go, I have no idea.

        • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          92·
          8 days ago

          I’m really struggling with this reading. The rebels aren’t space communists trying to save their homeland from the encroaching Empire, they’re fighting to restore the republic that was the precursor to Palpatine’s totalitarian regime. If you allow for the sake of argument that they represent the Viet Cong, then the story of the first movie is about how a handful of heroes, some of whom were defectors from the Empire, were the ones instrumental in the first major Rebel victory, which is a bizarre kind of Great Man Theory/white savior complex that I imagine the Viet Cong wouldn’t have appreciated.

          Also the later movies make it clear that the fall of the republic and the rise of the Empire was almost entirely due to the machinations of one man, Darth Sidious a.k.a. Emperor Palpatine, which again points to a Great Man Theory of history and doesn’t align well with the real world, where the rise of the U.S. as an imperial power has more to do with structural forces that serve the interests of the capitalist class.

          I’m not saying Lucas didn’t intend it to be about the Vietnam War, but I’m saying that if he did intend that, he didn’t include much in the movie that supports it.

          • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            14·
            8 days ago

            What is it about “Great Man Theory” that the Viet Cong wouldn’t have appreciated?

            I’ve been to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. I’ve seen the man. He looks as fresh as any person at their own wake.

            Attempting to load the Viet Cong with some sort of firm rejection of Great Man Theory is sheer projection and completely detached from reality.

          • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlEnglish
            7·
            8 days ago

            I’m really struggling with this reading. The rebels aren’t space communists trying to save their homeland from the encroaching Empire, they’re fighting to restore the republic that was the precursor to Palpatine’s totalitarian regime.

            My reading is that it’s not meant as a direct allegory to Vietnam but rather trying to stick Vietnam into a blender with stuff Americans like in order to link the Vietnamese struggle to other things. The rebels also draw some inspiration from the Revolutionary War, and obviously The Empire draws inspiration from Nazi Germany.

            The way I believe Lucas saw it was that Americans ought to be inclined to support the Vietnamese (because of the Revolutionary War, WWII, and general “anti-authortarian” sentiment), but the specifics of the conflict were so loaded with propaganda, racism, and blind loyalty that people could not look at it objectively. So, the controversial communist aspect was cut out, the racial lens was removed by making the rebels white, and distance was created between The Empire and the US by giving them British accents, which let people evaluate the in-universe conflict in the abstract. Sort of a “Platonic form” of the Vietnam War, if you will.

            If it was intended to change minds though, it’s unclear how effective it actually was. The problem is that when people evaluate conflicts in the real world, the racial lens comes back, they get immersed in propaganda about the specific group and their actions and ideology, and there’s a sense of patriotism and “rallying around the flag,” all of which generally outweigh the aspect idea of sympathizing with “The Rebellion.”

          • chaogomu@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            8 days ago

            Well, the man who won the Vietnam War knew damn well what a “Great Man/White Savior” could do, because the Bible used to win was T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

            T.E. Lawrence was also known as Lawrence of Arabia.

            That book is a guide to taking down an empire, and a warning about “great men/white saviors”.

            The key thing to remember, when fighting an empire, there are no Fronts, only Flanks.

        • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
          61·
          8 days ago

          I think it’s very possible to read too much coherent political thinking into the soup of influences that Lucas was tapping into for Star Wars, particularly the first one. He was anti-Vietnam War, absolutely, but he also got to the point of filming a scene where Biggs is decrying the Empire’s nationalization of industry, and the aesthetics were absolutely good Allies versus bad Nazis.

          He was basically a pretty average left-leaning American boomer. He loved big oil guzzling cars, but also rooting for the little guy. He hated Richard Nixon and mapped him onto Palpatine, but in his initial thinking was an ominous but naive shut-in who was manipulated by his advisors; hardly the apologia any serious analyst of Nixon would have gone with. Lucas had us rooting for the Rebels to overthrow the Empire and replace it with the Republic, but also wove in an absolutely medieval fondness for royalty.

          All of it was because the fairy tale was more important than the specifics of the politics, which were basically anti-authoritarian vibing.

      • aaa999@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        8 days ago

        there’s a (rightly, it was bad) deleted scene from the first one with Biggs where it explains that he is leaving to DODGE THE DRAFT

        it was going to tie nto his brief appearance at the end of the movie, but in the final version we just get to be like “ah yes, Biggs, a character in this film”

        • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          8 days ago

          And one of his stated reasons is that the Empire is nationalizing industry. Lucas is well-meaning but all over the place. The political influences are many and not super deep, just like the the literary/cinematic ones. The brilliance arises out of the pastiche spread liberally across the bones of a fairy tale.

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          3·
          8 days ago

          I read the script once and it had that scene and I thought it was strange cause I didn’t remember it, but then again I probably watched it a hundred times before a really noticed half of the things Obi-Wan says in the dialogue in his house after he saves Luke from the raiders. So I kinda just shrugged it off.

          But it made some things make a whole lot more sense. Like it kinda tied the story together in some ways. Biggs runs off to avoid being drafted into the Empire. Hopes to find the rebellion, but wants to keep that part quite (for obvious reasons).

          So then later when Luke meets Biggs with the Rebels and they obviously know each other, I don’t feel as gaslit about how I should know this character. And when they reminisce about their childhood, it makes a lot more sense when you recognize him as one of Luke’s friends from back home.

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        I mean, the plot follows the Campbellian “Hero with 1000 faces” storyline to a T.

        That’s a pretty funny thing to say since the whole point of The Hero with a Thousand Faces is that all these hero stories have elements in common. Lucas was just explicitly using that book as a source.

        What’s far more obvious is a big chunk of A New Hope was cribbed from EE “Doc” Smith’s book Triplanetary (where the Darth Vader character is named “Roger”…which is far less impressive). I’ve heard that Kurosawa’s movie The Hidden Fortress has a lot of the same plot, too.

      • not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
        2·
        8 days ago

        this was way more obvious to everyone at the time since it was on everybody’s mind, I would imagine