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.
George Lucas literally compared the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars to the Viet Cong in an interview back in the day.
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.
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.
Almost understands. Everything is “political” especially anything claiming to be beyond “politics”.
All media is political.
Plot-wise, Star Wars without politics is just Keeping Up With The Skywalkers
Oh boy
People who don’t want politics as part of a story have no business watching/reading sci-fi or fantasy.
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.
America was genuinely considered to be the good guys until quite recently.
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.
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
A take unironically expoused on fox news at some point
Yeah. There’s no need for politics anymore when you already have an intergalactic socialist utopia.
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…
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
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…
Ah yes, war. My favorite apolitical pass time
Pastime?
Je ne c’est pastime
Magrittings and masalutations to all!
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)
Pastme?
Padme?
Paddle you?
Padawan?
Padawana
Podracing
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.
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.”
- 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.
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.
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.
Except the rebels want to restore a democracy in the Original Trilogy.
Technically, it’s never stated which form of government (if any) the rebellion wants to create after the empire is gone.
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.
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
