I'm a completely apolitical trans socialist in a queerplatonic relationship with a robotic hivemind, and I am OUTRAGED that some people these days are trying to politicise the prime directive and use it to force us to accept genetically engineered people!
"Ugh were those people not paying attention when history class went over the eugenics wars‽ Next they're going to suggest using nuclear weapons on inhabited worlds!"
Your best guess is wrong. My keyboard on mobile integrated dumb AI features and now my spell check is just shitty. Unfortunately I haven't found one with similar aesthetics that I like so sometimes it thinks pastimes is pass times
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
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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?
also... blurring his name was really not necessary; he's so proud of this that a screenshot of his reddit comment about it is still his pinned tweet four years later.
::: spoiler and it's also his twitter bio now:
:::
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... 🙄😒
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.
Palpatine's personal guard is the Praetorian Guard (they wear red uniforms). Stormtroopers (mostly white uniforms) are named after the german Sturmtruppen (literal translation), that's WW1 stuff, not WW2 and has nothing to do with the SS.
George L. really doesn't seem to give an F about changing the names, as The Praetorian Guard was the imperial guard of the Imperial Roman army that served various roles for the Roman emperor.
George RR M. At least made York into Stark and Lancaster into Lannister.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
Dude, war is "politics through other means". So technically the franchise could be renamed "Star Politics Through Other Means". It just wouldn't fit on the promotional materials.
My son honestly doesn't understand that America was genuinely considered to be the good guys until quite recently.
Edit to add : whether they actually were or not is way beyong my scope before someone starts up with "you havent been paying attention" and "dont you even know about reagan" etc.
Europe, at least the parts of it I know well. The ww2 ending had that effect, which was then supported even more by the contrast of relative freedom compared to the totalitarian Russian hell many European countries fell into afterwards.
There is quite a bit of the world who experiences America directly as the bad guy or indirectly funding the bad guys. Eurocentrism is its own issue.
Europe, as is laid bare by Trump, exists as a lap dog to America as long as america was willing to pay lip service and to some sort of equality and drop some scraps from the table. It took the meaningless posturing of Trump saying he'll annex Greenland for anyone in leadship to acknowledge the shit position Europe put themselves in. Just because Western Europe was in a better position than the neighbors or frankly much of the rest of the world doesn't mean that they were in a good position for the capricious changes of American whimsy. That is not power that is just being adjacent to power.
And now utterly unprepared to deal with a narcissist ungrounded in the historical alliance between America and western europe. And it's not like this is the first time he's been in power. And if you think America will put someone like that in power again then you failed to understand the conditions of Americans. For fuck's sake, there are places where they still call it freedom fries because the French didn't join a terrible war.
Europe continues to be utterly unprepared for making the changes of another American narcissist. They are incapable of conceptualizing themselves as some sort of federated political entity that might have a political will other than whatever general direction America decides to lumber towards.
Sure, but I didnt grow up in one of the places they invaded. To the Vietnamese they're undoubtedly villains, but to a lot of the world they were "the leaders of the free world". They were Elvis, big cars, burger joints and blues music, they were the flag planted on the moon. Before we had the internet, we experienced it through mainstream media.
I think you've deliberately misunderstood the concept to go on an unnecessary rant about america bad.
They must not have paid close attention. The fascists of the US directly supported and funded the Nazi. Ford and other industrialists bank rolled the Nazi empire and IBM lended their computing and logistical technology to help murder the Jews.
By big part of Europe, mostly eastern, from commies block.
The poorer places, filled with cheap murican movies about beautiful Miami beaches, NewYork skyscrappers and overall prosperity. Even in 1960's, everyone had a tv and phone in murica, knew by stories, while in many regions of eastern Europe, up to early 90's or even alter, getting a phone at home was a luxury.
Murica was so rich and powerful, they could easily conquer the world by military or economical (back the day, something chinese stood for poor quality; we had german cars, food from Italy, and hi-tech from murica or Japan).
The promises of freedom and awesome possibilities. Well, whole country is made of immigrants.
Sadly, even now, many still talk super good about murica, like even Venezuelan kidnaping was a good thing, well, maybe, but not in such vulgar way. Ahhh, and remember, that most saw murica as heroes for freedom like from Star Wars, literally. They did beat the reds in the end, don't they?
I agree that the eastern block looked at America as a magical place with a unique culture. Did people see America as the good guys? What about when America invaded Iraq? What about the Vietnam war? Were these things that even mattered?
Gladly some grew up from that, and now , looking and news of Venezuela o other Hormuz feels bad - even if some bads happens at these places, such murican invasions are totally bad ways.
Sadly, some still see murica as heroes, and totally support more invasions for the glory of an eagle.
Very true, actually you reminded me of my second favourite children's film Schindler's List. They did a fantastic job making sure the parents could appreciate it too.
I dunno if you're being purposely obtuse, but try reading some original Hans Christian Andersen "children's stories" instead of the sanitized Disney versions.
Shit was so much darker and more twisted than anything Lucas has ever been involved in.
Huh. That's the first time I've ever actually seen that shot in such detail. Is it ai upscaled? I always remember the bodies as being so small on the screen that you could miss them if you didn't know where to look.
Nope, not upscaled, there's a fairly close-up shot when Luke goes back to the farmstead. It's pretty quick, though I've always thought quite graphic - the skeletons aren't just burnt black, there's very clearly charred but bloody red flesh still on them. If anything this is a low-resolution still compared to watching it on Blu-ray.
I don't think the original Star Wars is a children's movie, but I do think the the series became a lot more kid-friendly over time, probably both consciously and unconsciously on George's part.
Star Wars was very obviously marketed to children from the beginning. It was marketed to children because it was a children's movie. I'm not making a huge leap of logic here.
There's nothing wrong with liking a children's movie, if I didn't make that clear.
I remember when Star Wars wasn't political. It was a time known as "the movie didn't even exist back then".
At least Star Trek remains unsullied by politics
Yeah. There's no need for politics anymore when you already have an intergalactic socialist utopia.
I'm a completely apolitical trans socialist in a queerplatonic relationship with a robotic hivemind, and I am OUTRAGED that some people these days are trying to politicise the prime directive and use it to force us to accept genetically engineered people!
- Average Federation citizen
"Ugh were those people not paying attention when history class went over the eugenics wars‽ Next they're going to suggest using nuclear weapons on inhabited worlds!"
What fediverse are you on where anyone is anything like that?
I mean I know some people here have their problems, but I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who checks all those boxes...
I'm talking about Star Trek.
Ah shit, I was tired when I read "Federation" as "Fediverse", my bad...
Technically it's intra-galactic. As the Star Trek universe doesn't span multiple galaxies.
Ah, right you are. My mistake.
Sucks for all those other galaxies that are stuck with techno-feudal corpofascism...
The Foundation has entered the chat...
Yep - it's an interstellar civilization!
It has nothing on Babylon 5 for proper right wing sci-fi entertainment
A take unironically expoused on fox news at some point
Ah yes, war. My favorite apolitical pass time
Pastime?
My guess is that makeshiftreaper's first language is a romance language where it's usually something like passatempo, pasatiempo or passe-temps.
Romance language is a correct term, but it always sounds to me like ‘my first language is the language of love 🎸’
Well the major romance language countries do have a stereotype… But then you remember Romanian is also a romance language
Romanes eunt domus
Why they go the house?
I oughtta downvote you for that terrible grammar! Now write it correctly 100 more times!
Which French and often Italian - both Romance languages - are considered as.
(Though a quick search for the etymology of "romance" indicates that's just a coincidence)
Your best guess is wrong. My keyboard on mobile integrated dumb AI features and now my spell check is just shitty. Unfortunately I haven't found one with similar aesthetics that I like so sometimes it thinks pastimes is pass times
Pastme?
Padme?
Paddle you?
Padawan?
Padawana
Podracing
Je ne c'est pastime
Magrittings and masalutations to all!
what about the droid attack on the wookies?
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.
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
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.
Technically, it's never stated which form of government (if any) the rebellion wants to create after the empire is gone.
Hmm... But we do know a princess and at least one ex senator leads the rebellion.
One ex-senator also leads the empire
I don't think that there's anything close to a positively defined political agenda in the original text. At least none that were there on purpose.
The princess was also a senator.
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?
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)
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.
Even directly quoting Bush Jr at one point.
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.
"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."
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.
A theocracy under the Jedi religion?
No. A New Hope gave the impression Jedi were much older and mysterious than recent events.
Christianity is much older and more mysterious than recent events, but a lot of people want to make the USA a christian theocracy.
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.
Clearly it was a Star Special Military Operation, the emperor wouldn't just go around starting wars
So close...
[whooosh but TIE fighter sounds]
nnnnnWWWoonnnn
Almost there...
Stay on target!
I'll try spinning, that's a good trick!
You've turned off your racism computer. Is everything alright?
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.
Wait you're telling me the gays aren't just doing gay to upset the illiterate bible thumpers?
That’s because there are only two sexualities; straight and political.
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?
Everything is politics.
(as i wrote last time this was posted here)
he followed up to simultaneously say he was joking while also doubling down 🤦
https://xcancel.com/theronster/status/1538239717032042497
also... blurring his name was really not necessary; he's so proud of this that a screenshot of his reddit comment about it is still his pinned tweet four years later.
::: spoiler and it's also his twitter bio now: :::
Ah yes. The classic "lolololol I was just kidding and you fell for it lolololol" excuse.
Also, ironically, he means "I was being sarcastic", not "I was being ironic".
What an insufferable cunt. It’s because people like him why people hate nerds
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
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.
I mean both can be true, story inspired by Vietnam war, visuals inspired by Nazi Germany
And now America looks like Nazi Germany.
Makes sense to draw inspiration from Vietnam. That war must have been a very bad period for Americans.
Not nearly as bad as it was for the Vietnamese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv9Jq_mCJEo
The stormtroopers were a Nazi paramilitary force. So there's that.
HitlerPalpatine's personal guard is literally called the Stormtroopers (in German Schutzstaffel, better known as S.S.)Edit: read zaphod's comment below.
Palpatine's personal guard is the Praetorian Guard (they wear red uniforms). Stormtroopers (mostly white uniforms) are named after the german Sturmtruppen (literal translation), that's WW1 stuff, not WW2 and has nothing to do with the SS.
George L. really doesn't seem to give an F about changing the names, as The Praetorian Guard was the imperial guard of the Imperial Roman army that served various roles for the Roman emperor.
George RR M. At least made York into Stark and Lancaster into Lannister.
Lucas isn't great at naming stuff, though.
Yeah, clearly.
Dropout - All Star Wars Characters Have Stupid Names
He might be referring to the Strumabteilung or SA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv9Jq_mCJEo
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.
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.
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.
If you want to act like a dumbass even ironically, you don't get to be mad at people treating you like a dumbass
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.
you're being sarcastic here, right?
/sStar Wars: From the adventures of Luke Skywalker which came out before the first movie. Literally describes Emperor Palpatine as Richard Nixon.
sounds way too familiar 😭
Not sure if those cries reached his ears before that shutting away
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.
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.
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.
Even if you missed that, you probably picked up that it is against war and imperialism.
That was the part that shocked me as it rings even more true at this present moment.
The present moment is just continuing a very long trend.
Ewoks were definitely a nod to the Viet Cong
I think George Lucas has a tendency to make shit up as time goes on and gets high on his own supply.
That said, the prequels started with a literal trade embargo and there are several genocides in the series.
i mean, he's not wrong
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.
He did intend it to be a Vietnam allegory, with the Rebels as the Viet Cong. He was explicit about it, but for obvious reasons Disney doesn't make a huge deal out of that. But you're also right that the Campbell stuff was intentional, too.
I stand corrected then!
I have a new-found respect for Mr Lucas
You must not have seen the Andor series. Fascism is upfront and center.
But it isn't real-world fascism. Fantasy fascism is ok to topple.
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.
Disney greenlit Andor for the same reason Fox had the Simpsons all those years: money.
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.
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.
Fair.
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."
He actually said that the Ewoks were the Viet Cong.
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.
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.
He’s mentioned it in interviews, it was intentional.
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"
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.
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.
https://youtu.be/fv9Jq_mCJEo
Or you know you could just take the Creator's opinion directly instead of imagining your own parallel universe.
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.
this was way more obvious to everyone at the time since it was on everybody's mind, I would imagine
George Lucas literally compared the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars to the Viet Cong in an interview back in the day.
/r/selfAwareWolves or whatever the lemmy thing is
it was posted there a year ago
I just gave it its second upvote. I'm helping!
the upvotes didn't federate to your instance due to some bug; there are 120 where it was posted and 118 on the instance i'm on
Wow, never seen that one before. Are there really only 7 posts in the community or is that another weird bug?
yes [email protected] does in fact have only 7 posts.
[email protected] is another community which exists, and has 16 posts so far (six of which are from me...)
Americans be like
I love this gif and will always upvote it.
"Shorty was a cop??"
best part of forcing someone to watch the wire for the first time is getting to see them do the leo point at this scene.
I think some of these commenters who want to stop media being political are bots. The elites want to suppress free thinking and freedom of expression.
Dude, war is "politics through other means". So technically the franchise could be renamed "Star Politics Through Other Means". It just wouldn't fit on the promotional materials.
That's why I was already shaking my head when I read "Please explain number 2." Dude, war is political.
Look at you, figuring things out!
Almost understands. Everything is "political" especially anything claiming to be beyond "politics".
Oh boy
All media is political.
Kinda wild that their social media team is getting into arguments with randos
People who don't want politics as part of a story have no business watching/reading sci-fi or fantasy.
Plot-wise, Star Wars without politics is just Keeping Up With The Skywalkers
But... but it was clearly allegory to Cold War?
Back the day, murica was the good side, now, we could have 2 bads, sure, but back then, to big part of the world, murica was a Promise Land.
My son honestly doesn't understand that America was genuinely considered to be the good guys until quite recently.
Edit to add : whether they actually were or not is way beyong my scope before someone starts up with "you havent been paying attention" and "dont you even know about reagan" etc.
By whom‽
Europe, at least the parts of it I know well. The ww2 ending had that effect, which was then supported even more by the contrast of relative freedom compared to the totalitarian Russian hell many European countries fell into afterwards.
There is quite a bit of the world who experiences America directly as the bad guy or indirectly funding the bad guys. Eurocentrism is its own issue.
Europe, as is laid bare by Trump, exists as a lap dog to America as long as america was willing to pay lip service and to some sort of equality and drop some scraps from the table. It took the meaningless posturing of Trump saying he'll annex Greenland for anyone in leadship to acknowledge the shit position Europe put themselves in. Just because Western Europe was in a better position than the neighbors or frankly much of the rest of the world doesn't mean that they were in a good position for the capricious changes of American whimsy. That is not power that is just being adjacent to power.
And now utterly unprepared to deal with a narcissist ungrounded in the historical alliance between America and western europe. And it's not like this is the first time he's been in power. And if you think America will put someone like that in power again then you failed to understand the conditions of Americans. For fuck's sake, there are places where they still call it freedom fries because the French didn't join a terrible war.
Europe continues to be utterly unprepared for making the changes of another American narcissist. They are incapable of conceptualizing themselves as some sort of federated political entity that might have a political will other than whatever general direction America decides to lumber towards.
Sure, but I didnt grow up in one of the places they invaded. To the Vietnamese they're undoubtedly villains, but to a lot of the world they were "the leaders of the free world". They were Elvis, big cars, burger joints and blues music, they were the flag planted on the moon. Before we had the internet, we experienced it through mainstream media.
I think you've deliberately misunderstood the concept to go on an unnecessary rant about america bad.
And I think you've turned Western Europe into "a lot of the world". Frankly, my rant wasn't America bad, but Europeans naive.
Well the important thing is now that we have the internet we're immune to propaganda and misinformation.
They must not have paid close attention. The fascists of the US directly supported and funded the Nazi. Ford and other industrialists bank rolled the Nazi empire and IBM lended their computing and logistical technology to help murder the Jews.
By big part of Europe, mostly eastern, from commies block.
The poorer places, filled with cheap murican movies about beautiful Miami beaches, NewYork skyscrappers and overall prosperity. Even in 1960's, everyone had a tv and phone in murica, knew by stories, while in many regions of eastern Europe, up to early 90's or even alter, getting a phone at home was a luxury.
Murica was so rich and powerful, they could easily conquer the world by military or economical (back the day, something chinese stood for poor quality; we had german cars, food from Italy, and hi-tech from murica or Japan).
The promises of freedom and awesome possibilities. Well, whole country is made of immigrants.
Sadly, even now, many still talk super good about murica, like even Venezuelan kidnaping was a good thing, well, maybe, but not in such vulgar way. Ahhh, and remember, that most saw murica as heroes for freedom like from Star Wars, literally. They did beat the reds in the end, don't they?
I agree that the eastern block looked at America as a magical place with a unique culture. Did people see America as the good guys? What about when America invaded Iraq? What about the Vietnam war? Were these things that even mattered?
Lovely protectors of freedom.
Gladly some grew up from that, and now , looking and news of Venezuela o other Hormuz feels bad - even if some bads happens at these places, such murican invasions are totally bad ways.
Sadly, some still see murica as heroes, and totally support more invasions for the glory of an eagle.
Star wars is a children's movie, like frozen or the little mermaid. It's just for little boys instead of girls.
It's definitely my favourite children's series with a fairly graphic beheading, dismemberment and the slaughter of children. Fun for the little ones.
Just like the classics with witches eating children
Very true, actually you reminded me of my second favourite children's film Schindler's List. They did a fantastic job making sure the parents could appreciate it too.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is my third favorite children's movie.
I dunno if you're being purposely obtuse, but try reading some original Hans Christian Andersen "children's stories" instead of the sanitized Disney versions.
Shit was so much darker and more twisted than anything Lucas has ever been involved in.
It's like OP's post is repeating itself. It's like poetry. It rhymes.
When Schindler finally used a lightsaber in the 5th movie it was epic, couldn't wait to get home and play him in battlefront
5th movie? Schindler was in episode 1. He was literally the man who resued the boy from the nazi slavers. The queen he was helping hide is also a jew.
Huh. That's the first time I've ever actually seen that shot in such detail. Is it ai upscaled? I always remember the bodies as being so small on the screen that you could miss them if you didn't know where to look.
Nope, not upscaled, there's a fairly close-up shot when Luke goes back to the farmstead. It's pretty quick, though I've always thought quite graphic - the skeletons aren't just burnt black, there's very clearly charred but bloody red flesh still on them. If anything this is a low-resolution still compared to watching it on Blu-ray.
I don't think the original Star Wars is a children's movie, but I do think the the series became a lot more kid-friendly over time, probably both consciously and unconsciously on George's part.
Ages 5 and up, 1978
And? you realize that all the toy licensing was about making money and nothing else right?
Just because there are children's toys for an IP does not mean that the IP is intended for children. That Venn diagram is not a circle.
Star Wars was very obviously marketed to children from the beginning. It was marketed to children because it was a children's movie. I'm not making a huge leap of logic here.
There's nothing wrong with liking a children's movie, if I didn't make that clear.
Oh yeah? Where are all the singalongs?
In the holiday special
Edit: Oh yeah, also the yub yub song, and famously the space version of jazz: jizz
Three movies: two songs.
Not a sing-along!
So? It's fun
Never said children's movies aren't fun. Wall-e is a banger
It really is... It's hard to go back and enjoy the movies after growing up and watching like, actually good movies.