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Star Wars is about the battle against fascism.
Which is indeed why the Imperial officers all wore Hugo Boss nazi uniforms.
George Lucas did also say at one point that he based the red and green laser fire of the Imperial and Rebel forces on the tracers being fired by the US and Viet Cong, which was an iconic bit of imagery that was widely televised. Also:
However, when Lucas sat down with director James Cameron in 2018, he revealed how the Empire was also meant to resemble America — particularly the way it prosecuted the Vietnam War. Cameron pointed out how the Rebels are a small group using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized Empire. Today, Cameron added, the Rebels would be called terrorists. “When I did it,” Lucas replied, “they were Viet Cong.”
In other words, Lucas viewed the Vietnamese as the rebels and America as the invading villains. He further explained that Star Wars was a “vessel” in which to place his worldview that the United States had become an empire during the Vietnam War, doomed to fail like every empire before it. Cameron noted how those views carried over into the Star Wars prequel trilogy, especially in Padmé’s line, “This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.” Lucas replied, “We’re in the middle of it right now,” referring to the country’s political state.
(Via.)
Besides of the “Wars”, it also has a lot of explicit politics, it’s just the Intergalactic Empire isn’t being controlled by the National Socialist Sith Party.
Once I realised it was Twitter, it all makes sense. It’s a hellsite let it die.
Close to kind of getting it - Lucas has compared the empire in Star Wars to both the American empire during the Vietnam War, and the British empire during the American Revolution.
And drew inspiration from Nazi Germany when conceptualizing the Empire.
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That second one doesn’t make sense unless Leia owned a ton of slaves
lolwut?
Inserted a comma in case it was confusing.
i think they said the second one doesn’t make sense unless princess Leia owned a ton of slaves.
princess Leia owned a ton of slaves.
You mean “droids”?
War is politics
“Noooo, war in entertainment media should be good guys fighting bad guys!”
“Americans fighting middle easterners for example.
Non-political stuff like that.”
By other means
Yep. Politics by other means is still politics.
he followed up to simultaneously say he was joking while also doubling down 🤦
I actually thought he was being ironic. I thought, someone who was actually engaging with the allegory enough to acknowledge the correct answer and so quickly—this couldn’t have been their first time thinking about it.
This second reply is very confusing if that’s true, though.
Sure Aaron… You were being “Ironic”…
Lol, he’s literally doing the “I was just pretending” comic.
i like this version
https://xcancel.com/theronster/status/1919491001296552311#m
He trebled down a year later. I think he is actually trying to be ironic in his bio. But he’s still just an idiot.
Wow what a fuckin ass.
I wonder why BioWare was pressured to cut out so much of Juhani’s content in KOTOR. I don’t think that was a BioWare decision - Jade Empire and Mass Effect both had lesbians. I’m not really willing to give George Lucas rainbow a lot of rainbow points.
If Finn and Poe’s chemistry had been allowed to blossom naturally, I think the sequels would have been much better. The attempted “theme” of “it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can shape your own destiny” just would be so much better if the story had been about Finn’s growth and reconciliation with his past work for the First Order. Then you don’t have Rose (and the subsequent ridiculous internet harassment that poor actress received) and the aborted character/subplot.
You can even do Palpatine returning, just have it be more like the Thrawn clone shit. Less Jedi stuff, more people stuff. You’re even copying the structure of the original trilogy that way - Rey is off doing her Jedi training stuff, while Poe and Finn are on related adventures that lead them to growing closer and closer.
Like I’m 99% sure the actors for both characters have even said that they agreed with the fact that those characters were needing each other.
I’m not denying that Finn and Poe had an interesting chemistry, I just think that Poe should have stayed dead.
The lingering question of what could have been would have been a way to deepen Finn’s character.
And if you want to keep the actor, well. When Poe comes in to land after rescuing Finn and the group, his first words to Poe are “why are you wearing my brother’s coat?”
And now you have another interesting character dynamic to explore.
The author of the novelization confirmed it was originally supposed to be Rey and Finn, but I think everyone can agree that FinnxPoe and ReyxKickingKyloInTheBalls is what should have happened.
Personally I think ReyxFinnxPoe was a pretty natural evolution but Disney would never have had the balls for it.
Wars are political in nature, it doesn’t even need to get to this shallow of a depth
“War is a mere continuation of politics by other means” -Carl von Clausewitz
A phrase I hate mostly because I have trouble finding a reason it’s wrong.
That might be because it’s right: War is an instrument of politics just as taxation, law enforcement, welfare, or diplomacy. They are each employed to achieve political goals.
To a politician that should sound darn obvious because political goals is all they think about, it’s the generals and soldiers that need to be reminded of it because it influences the way war is fought, can be fought. As an example, in that rough section of the book (it’s been a while) Clausewitz goes on to explain how total war is impossible: For a people to have the will to fight they have to fight for something, and if there’s nothing to fight for, no civil life, no tradition, no nothing, only war, there is no will, any more. If fascists would read and understand him they’d realise why their politics, “war for war’s sake”, are inherently self-destructive. Difference between Stauffenberg and say Goering.
Really there’s nothing that’s not political in some way. Politics is the expression of human wills and desires and people tend to say something is political when they disagree.
“Keep politics out of ____” is just “I don’t want to ever assess my ethics with a critical lens.”
This is the perfect way to say it.
“Ethics” is the word I was looking for, for what people are now calling “politics.” It’s why people don’t like Star Wars, Sesame Street, or Mr. Rogers: Because they are ethical.
Exactly. How could we possibly divorce our values from our politics? As far as society goes, it is the ultimate expression of our values.
Yuppp. It’s basically like admitting you like the present ideology, and just don’t want to think about how life could be better.
Literally. Politics is all about the power dynamics between people. If there are two or more people there will always be a power dynamic even if the two are on good terms and do not exert power over each other.
It’s like how you can always describe the color in any given painting, even when the painting is monochromatic.
Woah there, that’s leftist woke propaganda, talking about human wills and desires. I was brought up apolitical so I’m sensitive to these things - I can only vote for the Republicans because every other party is just too political.
/s
Region locked :/
Did you know there is a vegan heavy metal artist that named one of his songs your username?
🤘
Region locked, unfortunately.
George Lucas isn’t approved for international distribution.
The original book “Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker”, which came out before the movie. Literally describes Emperor Palpatine as Nixon.
Star Wars has always been political.
(Edit: Clearly I fucked up my phrasing lol. Bolded sections below are what I’ve added to try to more coherently explain.)
“Political” is one of those words you want to be careful of, because it’s been very carefully designed and redefined to serve a very particular purpose.
According to a certain segment of people who have redefined “political” and who I do not agree with, booing Taylor Swift because of her politics is not “political.” Kid Rock opening his concert having a livestream with Trump isn’t “political.” Nascar taking a few minutes to honor a little group of police officers standing on a little stage and having everyone stand up and clap isn’t “political.”
But according to that segment of people who I do not agree with, some other things are “political.” You know the ones.
What I would say about it is: Be careful with redefined words. It’s worth the extra effort to refuse to go along with the redefinition. Star Wars is not political. It’s just an epic story of fighting against injustice. It is “political,” by the wrong new definition that word has been given, though, and always has been. There’s a huge difference and the difference is worth examining.
(Edit: I have not much belief that editing to clarify will make much of a difference. But, it was legit confusing the way I wrote it at first, so at least I can attempt to fix it going forward.)
What are the “other things” that are political? I’m dumb and don’t know what you’re referring to.
I think I was too abstract about it to properly make sense.
So: People have started using “political” to mean for example some movie star saying that Israel shouldn’t be killing all those people, or NFL players kneeling, or movies having queer people in them sometimes. Those are the “other things” that I was saying that are being defined as “political.” When “political” is used to criticize this stuff, it basically means that they are demanding that no other people in the world have opinions about it or speak out about them, unless they’re agreeing with the baseline that is defined as “not political.” The genders for video game character are “male” and “political,” the races for a sitcom character are “white” and “political,” the politics for a football player are “Republican” and “political.” And so on.
It is true that those same people never define it as “political” when someone is having opinions (usually much more explicitly and tribally political) that agree with their own. It’s only “political” when it’s against their opinions, and even if the “political” content is in some totally apolitical way, which is why they’re all of a sudden freaking out about Star Wars and Sesame Street. That was sort of what I was alluding to, I guess a little unclearly, in the first part.
But I’m not even talking about that too much. I’m saying that in addition to being aware of that discrepancy, we shouldn’t even be buying into that redefinition of the word. If Star Wars had someone come out and say that you should make sure to vote for the Democrats because they have more sensible fiscal policy, that would be political. If Tim Tebow put a big Obama sticker on his helmet, that would be political. Both of those would actually be fine (and happen all the time in the other direction, and pretty rarely in the anti-Republican direction), but in any case, the expansion of “political” to mean that any type of worldview which happens to make some politicians look bad or disagree with them is automatically “political” is what I was objecting to, in this case applied to Star Wars. It’s just a story about good guys and bad guys. You don’t have to be political to dislike Nixon or use him as a template internally for an evil character or something. It’s just good sense, Nixon was a piece of shit. He was a bad guy. If you dislike him because he’s a Republican, that’s political.
frankly, I think you are mistaken about what it means to be political. It isn’t strictly about one party vs another. you can talk about politics without explicitly supporting or disliking a political party.
being political at the core is about policy.
and this is why star wars was political from the start. it wasn’t just a cool story, it was meant in part to make you sympathise with the rebels, and dislike the empire. And crucially, to link the rebels to Vietnam and the empire with the US and Nixon. it shows a dislike of what the US was doing, what the party in charge was doing, and perhaps to turn people away from that.
saying all that isn’t political is like saying Bob Dylan wasn’t political because he didn’t mention the parties
If you went back to the 1970s and told people you thought Star Wars was a political movie, they would think something was really wrong with your thought process. The themes, characters, and the basic structure of the story (the Hero’s Journey / monomyth) was old when the Greeks invented democracy. It certainly predates anything we could call politics, it predates almost everything about us. It is probably one of humanity’s oldest inventions that’s still in common use.
Bob Dylan was always political, by the definition I would use, because he talked about issues of public policy and society in his songs. A New Hope was never political and still isn’t. If a person wants to define the new and more inclusive Star Wars, and Sesame Street, as “political,” then fine, although I will probably want to probe their definition and probably will try to make the case that the way they’re defining this neologism is part of a toxic propaganda structure they’ve unintentionally absorbed.
I don’t usually like to get into extensive wrangling about what words mean what things, but this one I do think is important because of how it features in a particular type of propaganda structure which is good to call out.
Star Wars is a movie about the policy of an authoritarian government, and the actions of those that fall on both sides of that policy. It’s explicitly political. It was written to be so.
All that text just to still be dead wrong is impressive really
Nah, most Republicans I’ve.met are absolutely like this. You’re a cis white male Republican, or you’re being political and rude.
I think I triggered the Lemmy “It’s an enemy! Get him!” machine with careless phrasing of the beginning, so that people took the opposite meaning from it as what I meant to say.
What do you think I am saying, that you are describing as dead wrong?
I don’t think you did. I got your meaning even before you explained everything nicely. It seems more like this topic has attracted attention of the people using “political” in the twisted sense you describe.
I don’t think so, actually. I think they are sincere left-wingers who love nothing more than being hostile to enemies, and once they think they’ve found one, they really don’t want to let go of that classification because being self-righteous about the enemies being bad is a really fun thing. Sometimes they even have to invent new categories of enemies (“he doesn’t want vegan cat food LET’S FUCK HIM UP”) because there is a shortage and that lets them engage in what they like to do, but if they find an actual Republican or something? Boy howdy can they get going.
Honestly, I do see how it doesn’t require some crazy misunderstanding to read what I originally wrote as being pro-Trump. I expected people to see the context and interpret it accordingly, as you did, but apparently not. The sarcasm part was easy to miss, I do think, I guess, if you’re not already looking for it or something.
Whatever. I fixed it to be definitely clear now, my part is done, I wash my hands of it lol.
I think you have good intentions with that post, but I also ‘think’ I get why you’re being reamed: We cannot simply “not accept” a broadened definition of the word “political”.
Words are for communication. If many, many others have already wholly swallowed the pill that any “undesirable” position on any topic is “political”, then it behooves a good communicator to work with that definition, not to simply reject it for being academically inaccurate.
Basically… you’re doing about the same as someone griping about others saying, “lol I’m so OCD” because they like to arrange their books alphabetically. Except on a much, much looser term than something like OCD, because football dude kneeling was a political statement against police brutality. As much as we all wish the world was more sane than that, it isn’t.
Yeah, I get that. I do think that the way this particular word features in one particular type of propaganda structure makes it worthwhile to call out at length and talk about.
no, star wars is political in the “old” sense.
The whole fucking thing was about taking over the senate
The prequels? The prequels had some political content, yes. Probably not any “political” content, that is limited to the more recent movies only.
Political: the act of making people feel bad about their dumb choices and opinions
Woke: whatever a right winger doesn’t like
This is the best definition of how a word is actually used I’ve seen in a while
Every so often I wonder how people could be so stupid and/or heartless to bring the world to where it is today and then I see an American tweet something outstandingly silly/inmoral and I remember, lol.
Also, Americans use the word “political” to mean ethical nowadays. And whenever they recoil because you said something like “hey, wars for profit are wrong” or “gay people shouldn’t be killed just because they’re gay” and ask you to stop being ‘political’, they’re just admitting they don’t stand for anything, no self-restraining rules nor lofty ideals. This is why the Nazis could also go as far as they went: “just follow the leader and I too will succeed, I don’t believe or stand for anything except what has been told to me and I’m a good boy for following”. They want/got the bag, and fuck you, basically.
Also, Americans use the word “political” to mean ethical nowadays.
A certain segment of our population has been told to equate words like “political” and “woke” with “That person is saying or doing something that might influence someone about something I’ve been told to disagree with”.
It’s incredibly horrifying how quickly this same segment of the population has been conditioned to view the rest as “weak, sensitive, entitled weirdos who can’t handle even the slightest criticism without seeing it as a existential threat” while simultaneously being conditioned to throw a tantrum when anyone takes an action to support something they’ve been told they should disagree with.
Every so often I wonder how people could be so stupid
Most of the world’s large predators are extinct or on the verge of extinction. Interpret that how you want.
Americans use the word “political” to mean ethical nowadays.
This is wonderfully succinct and I will be stealing it, please and thank you.
See also: anything that challenges the status quo and/or my worldviews.
To be fair, the Rebels weren’t Asian stereotypes, how were the dummies supposed to recognize that?
searches for “Han Solo’s Asian Friend”
Result:
Han Solo never even met that guy! He was Lando’s friend!
I always saw him as a Mexican stereotype
“There’s only one Mexican in Star Wars and of course they make Chewy sound re----ed.” - Gabriel Iglesias
His actor is Kenyan and speaks Kenyan in the movie. Of course he is a celebrity in Kenya.
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People say this so often that I expected the plot to be way closer than it actually is.
He was inspired by more things than just the general framework, one of the more blatant being the scene transitions where one scene wipes across the screen to the next one.
If you read Triplanetary by E. E. “Doc” Smith, the first half is basically “A New Hope”.
Heh, I watched this and thought it reminded me of something but didn’t make the connection.
The 2 peasants are even very similar to the 2 droids, a tall skinny one and a short stout one
Stewie and Brian Griffin also could fit that description. It’s a bit generalized for looks
