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People who consume sci-fi and fantasy thinking there should be no politics, don’t understand the genre at all.
Can we really point to a single instance of a good sci-fi/fantasy that doesn’t touch on politics/societal commentary at all?
I doubt it.
I’m waiting for someone to say that Babylon 5 never got “political”
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.)
he followed up to simultaneously say he was joking while also doubling down 🤦
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.
Lol, he’s literally doing the “I was just pretending” comic.
i like this version
Wow what a fuckin ass.
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”…
Once I realised it was Twitter, it all makes sense. It’s a hellsite let it die.
Yeah who tf is still scrolling that shit unless they’re thumbs can’t unclick the dumbass X icon on their phone
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.)
no, star wars is political in the “old” sense.
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
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.
Nah, most Republicans I’ve.met are absolutely like this. You’re a cis white male Republican, or you’re being political and rude.
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.
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.
War is politics
By other means
Yep. Politics by other means is still politics.
“Noooo, war in entertainment media should be good guys fighting bad guys!”
“Americans fighting middle easterners for example.
Non-political stuff like that.”
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
His actor is Kenyan and speaks Kenyan in the movie. Of course he is a celebrity in Kenya.
“There’s only one Mexican in Star Wars and of course they make Chewy sound re----ed.” - Gabriel Iglesias
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”?
Hence why the droids weren’t allowed in a rural areas cantina.
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.
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.
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
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Yuppp. It’s basically like admitting you like the present ideology, and just don’t want to think about how life could be better.
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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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.
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.
Region locked :/
In case anyone is remotely unclear, the empire was the Nazis/Axis. The rebel alliance was the Brits/Allies. Look at the films it borrows from. The Battle of Britain (1969), The Dam Busters (1955). It’s a sci-fi setting WWII.
What a strange snippet. I’ve seen more articles about how Star Wars is based on samurai movies. Which is also true. George Lucas took inspiration from loads of places.
Exactly, the original star wars was basically WW2 movies with Flash Gorden. By the time of RTJ, Lucas has specifically said it was his intention that the Ewoks were the viet cong, and the empire was the USA. And then in RotS, Vader says “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy!” which is a pretty direct quote from George W. Bush who said “Either you’re with us or you’re against us in the fight on terror”.
Yes, Bush said that but he’s just quoting the Bible. Matthew 12:30 “He that is not with me is against me” so by Obi-Wan’s subsequent assertion that “only the Sith deal in absolutes” Jesus is more Sith than Jedi.
Political: the act of making people feel bad about their dumb choices and opinions
This is the best definition of how a word is actually used I’ve seen in a while
Woke: whatever a right winger doesn’t like
