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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.
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?
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 support one or another party
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.
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.
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:
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.
Han Solo never even met that guy! He was Lando’s friend!
It’s astounding any living thing which is that deeply stupid can survive to adulthood.
this post is cool and right but remember that disney is complicit in genocide
they are far from progressive
Which is why you should pirate Andor and ignore the rest of the franchise.
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.
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.
Political: the act of making people feel bad about their dumb choices and opinions
Woke: whatever a right winger doesn’t like
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.
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.
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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.
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he followed up to simultaneously say he was joking while also doubling down 🤦
Lol, he’s literally doing the “I was just pretending” comic.
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.
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”…
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.
This is sort of wrong, though. lucas has said he drew inspiration from all the tiny country vs. giant empire fights - american revolution, vietnam, the winter war, Yi Sun-Sen’s defeat of Japan, etc.
Vietnam was the most culturally prominent in the US, but beyond the superficialities (little force defeats big force) the stories don’t really track at all. Like: there was no deathstar moment, there wasn’t even a single decisive victory (the US just got sick of the meatgrinder and public pressure overcame the political will to continue). The US also wasn’t defeated then replaced New Republic style, the NV weren’t going it alone in their fight against the empire and nobody threw Kissinger off a cliff at the end (mores the fucking pity),
He drew ideas from a LOT when writing it; presenting it like it was inspired by a single event is pretty disingenuous.
George Lucas wrote some stuff, and his ex-wife worked with him in some capacity. There were some that said George Lucas was a visionary genius and he also had a wife and so of course she was involved. There were some that said that George Lucas was a big self-important orangutan who couldn’t write for shit, and his ex-wife fixed it all up and turned it into an epic story because she had some apparently pretty significant screenwriting talent. And who’s to say? Surely there would be no way of going back in time and examining this intimate process in retrospect and finding out.
And then, the wife having left, he wrote the prequels without her involvement, and the world got its answer.
Lmao well said.
Shit, we gotta get that ex-wife back in charge of star wars to fix it again.
And then, the wife having left, he wrote the prequels without her involvement, and the world got its answer.
With the caveat that I haven’t watched the prequels for a good several years, the overarching storyline is actually pretty good, but the special effects were too heavy on CGI so they dated quickly and a lot of the writing of individual lines was too much toned for a younger audience.
George Lucas would be silly to not make the next trilogy that was released 20 years later something fans of the original trilogy could take their kids to, but unfortunately it went a bit too far into trying to be kid friendly. Plus it definitely had sequences designed specifically to be recreated in video games, as any family movie did in the early 2000s (heck one of the 101 Dalmations movies even featured some gameplay of the tie-in game in the film!)
Chewbacca was supposed to be more like Jar Jar Binks but at that point he still had people around him to push back on that.
Look at some of the CG segments injected into the rereleases of the original trilogy, which Lucas used to bring it more in line with his original vision: cheap slapstick and goofy aliens.
Also see: Stan Lee’s writing when he didn’t have Jack Kirby around.
I thought I remembered hearing that the Endor fight was pretty explicitly Vietnam
I could certainly believe it, there’s lots of parallels. Dense jungle forest, ancient ruins, small brown… natives…
…
… hey wait a minute.
Really though I could believe it. I was only commenting that the idea all of OT star wars was an allegory for vietnam is a stretch. The existance of allegories in the OT is totally reasonable.
One could make the argument that the Death Star is a stand-in for nuclear weapons, as literal weapon of mass destruction. There was notable political push to use nuclear weapons in the Vietnam war
This was not too long after there was notable political push to use nuclear weapons for heavy excavation and similar engineering purposes. Thankfully it was never actually performed since the results would obviously have been devastating
Man, I know everyone was doing cocaine basically continuously in the 50s/60s but even for that era Teller was one coked up lunatic. His plan to “deflect earthquakes” by burying a mesh of nuclear weapons across basically the entire west coast has gotta be my favorite. Just absolute insanity.
I prefer the 18th century Carl Von Clausewitz’s definition of war:
War Is politics by other means
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.
Once I realised it was Twitter, it all makes sense. It’s a hellsite let it die.
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.
