the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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Eh, as much as I like Star Wars, the rebels and the empire are both narratively and aesthetically vague enough that people can imprint their politics on them pretty easily. The Empire can be Trump, or Biden, or Stalin or Hitler, the rebels can be communists or libertarian sovereign state weirdos. It's just "little guy vs big guy", the specifics of the politics can be whatever you want them to be. I think that's why we all geeked out over Andor cuz Andor actually put some narrative meat on the rebels backstory that made them a bit more clearly leftist inspired.
I've grown skeptical of media that can generic "rebels" fighting generic "empires" cuz the truth is everyone thinks of themselves as the underdog, so everyone is gonna think they're the rebels. It's not leftist coded it's just basic storytelling.
The Ewoks get a lot of shit but they're like very clearly a jungle militia á la the viet cong, albeit with George Lucas' weird racism about them being some sort of tribal backwater.
Even with that, I see a lot of "noble savage" good guys in lib media too, the hero's find some tribe of hippies who worship a tree or whatever and they help them fight the cartoonishly evil corporation run by a slug demon or something. Libs just see them as hippies who love nature and free love and CHUDs just see them as trad who are free from 5G towers and the idea the earth is round. There's no actual anti-colonialism analysis there just vibes.
Again I like Star Wars and think Lucas was trying to be progressive in his own 70s boomer way but it is mostly just a SciFi fairy tale with good guys and bad guys with some vague left v right coding, vague enough everyone can put their own spin on it.
I generally agree on your statement with the vagueness here, especially once you factor in stuff like the force and such, but I don't think a chud is going to look at an Ewok and think "based, this is me". They're too cute coded for that
Probably not, but still if you asked a Chud Star Wars fan about the Ewoks they'd probably pull something like that out of their ass. They've probably never thought about it much till someone inquires them about it, then they manifest some sort of explanation for it.
FYI, I've met a decent number of CHUDs who have a fetishized admiration for Native Americans. As stupid as that sounds they seem to be into the idea of society of trad men who hunt buffalo all day. Of course they think the US was totally justified in genociding them and that modern Native Americans are all lazy drunks but they think the aesthetics are cool cuz it lines up with their BS imagine if independent men living off the land or whatever.
Based and Ferngully: The Last Rainforestpilled
The "both sides" argument really doesn't work when one side builds and uses a gun that blows up planets lololol. I don't know what was vague about the Death Star hahahaha
Yeah there's really only one allegory in history for the Death Star and it's the Americans nuking Japan. All the bad guys are white men with British accents and dress like Nazis. Lucas couldn't have been less subtle. There's no political commissars, no "big brother" posters, none of the usual vague allusions to the evil Soviets that most generic bad guys get saddled with. No one wears an ushanka or a greatcoat. The enemy soldiers are literally called Stormtroopers. They use gigantic battleships to launch swarms of fighter aircraft with which to attack the good guys. Their super-weapon is their absolute trump-card and the whole military side of the narrative revolves around destroying ~~America's nuclear capacity~~ the Death Star.
Also even though the prequels are pretty much considered a mess, they do reveal something about Lucas. Because of the prequel movies we understand them to be the story of how the Republic turned away from democracy and became the fascist Empire, but really before the prequel movies came out the established lore of the clone wars was VERY vague and was pretty much just considered the “before times” and mythologized a lot for the sake of whatever book or comic or whatever was referencing at the time. This means that during the production of the prequels with the lack of solid lore about the clone wars, Lucas made the conscious effort to fill that hole and tell the story about how a liberal democracy can turn into a fascist regime it wasn’t like an accident or anything, dude is just political like that albeit those politics are made into movies for children.
Blowing up a planet is just a generic "evil thing", it's like kidnapping a princess or burning down a village. People can imprint their values onto it, if you point out that their side has done the equivalent of planet blowing uping plenty, even more than the people they perceive as "The Empire" they can just dream up some justification.
Back to Andor, Andor shows The Empire doing evil shit that's a much closer analog to actual evil shit actual empire is doing in the world right now, it's harder to deny your side is The Empire the (though CHUDs will always at least try and pull off the mental gymnastics to do so).
Edit: also idk where you got "both sides" from my comment, my argument wasn't that Star Wars isn't clear on who the villain is, quite the opposite, just that's it's politics are vague enough that people can imagine the villains as being anyone they don't like. CHUDs see the Empire as culture-Marxist woke SJWs just as easily as leftists see the Empire as the U$A.
Andor was almost too good for star wars
the whole "the empire is basically using slavery and ramping up the horror to try to build the death star (analog for first atomic bomb) as fast as possible before the risk of a popular revolt becomes impossible to defend against".
the fact you could tell their political and military hold on power was very flimsy at first and they had to use liberal institutions and direct military occupation but had to move carefully at first.
if the whole "I DECLARE AN EMPIRE" thing palps did in the prequels could be retconned it would be almost perfection
explains so much in the end and deeply tied to material reality it breathed life into what i thought was a dead franchise and i dread the next season with how rushed it's going to be
The point of the whole "I DECLARE AN EMPIRE" bit was that he didn't change the role of the republic much. The two were fundamentally the same at the time of the clone wars and the republic couldn't stop it. It's just a Hindenburg allegory.
i know i just wish he didn't say the line
could have just declared himself "lifetime chancellor ushering in a new Imperium" and by the next installment people are talking about palpatine's "Empire" and then just "the Empire"
I love it because it is so blatant. I want Star Wars to be cartoonish with that shit honestly. Lucas making his Nixon/Bush stand in declare himself Hitler is just funny
Yeah people need to remember these are movies for children and that hamfisted nature should be expected.
that's a good bit idea for those solidjj videos
Vauge enough? Lol. No.
Vague is probably not the right word.
It's a story that relies on aesthetics a lot, which is fine in and of itself, but people can imprint on aesthetics they like fairly easily provided they aren't too blatant with their imagery.
There's no real discussion of the politics of The Empire or Rebels, The Empire is just bad, the Rebels good. Sure The Empire all dress like Nazis and are clean cut white dudes with British accents, and the Rebels look more scruffy and rag tag, but I can easily perform the mental gymnastics necessary to take a right wing read of that.
But when the creator says the rebels are based off the Vietcong and when you combine that with the fact that he believed filmmakers in the USSR had generally more freedom to be creative compared to western filmmakers, it doesn’t seem so vague at that point.
In this day and age it doesn't surprise me that people can take a story that's very overt and wrap it into something it's not. That doesn't mean that it's a correct reading.
It shouldn't really be a huge stretch to assume that anyone willing to immolate civilian farmers and build unwieldy superweapons that serve no purpose but annihilating planets isn't on the level, but people surprise me