chamerionwrites:

cadesama:

attackfish:

lj-writes:

anghraine:

It’s amazing how the SW Villain Discourse gleefully embraces the extent to which the Imperials are Space Nazis, and completely ignores the much greater extent to which they’re Space Americans. 

Watch the Jedha market battle in Rogue One.

Space Iraq under American occupation.

Palpatine’s power grabs and his justifications behind them during the last days of the Republic were a pretty clear send up of the George W. Bush administration’s terrorism and national security policies.

Hitler subverted a brand new and very weak democracy of questionable legitimacy in the eyes of the German people, formed after the fall of an empire in a cataclysmic war, using his personal paramilitary as much as the ballot box to gain power, a situation that has more in common with the First Order than with Palpatine.

Palpatine subverted a venerable, complacent republic fractured by powerful moneyed interersts, by claiming to be protecting the freedom and security of the people, using the pretext of war to amass ever greater power, preparing carefully for the final overthrow of the regime that brought him to power.

In short, while the Empire uses the asthetics of the Nazis and also to a lesser extent the Soviet Union, those are all just trappings. The First Order are space Nazis, but the Empire are space Totalitarian Americans.

LOL more like Space Regular Americans, given that the Ewoks are the Viet Cong, Leia’s cinnamon buns were always based on that of a Sandinista revolutionary, and the only country to use a superweapon in the real world is the USA. 

THIS. This this this this THIS.

As an American who came of age post-9/11 (I was 11 when it happened, and just shy of 13 when the buildup for the Iraq War was announced), it’s downright uncomfortable – in the best possible way, the way that renders art so piercing and so powerful – to watch the Jedha scenes in Rogue One. “The Holy City,” mined for resources by a foreign power. The clear Middle Eastern influence stamped on every inch of the design. Riz-Ahmed-who-once-played-Shafiq-Rasul stumbling through the desert with a bag over his head. Urban warfare between insurgents and an occupying army, simmering tension in the streets, civilians caught in the crossfire. It’s scarcely even subtext; remove the aliens, and you’re watching a news broadcast from my teenage years. I am frankly gobsmacked that anyone can view those scenes and NOT have their brain jump straight to Iraq, which I guess is a testament to how good human beings are at seeing what they want to see.

My own impression of the prequels (though I’d have to watch them again to be sure) was always that they were drawing more conscious inspiration from the late Roman Republic than from the Bush years…but then, the late 20th/early 21st century United States bears some striking historical resemblance to the late Roman Republic. Far more so in many ways than to 1930s Germany, as noted above. In fact I’ve long said that I suspect part of the problem with the prequels stems from this strange sort of…narrative shyness they seem to have, about looking their critique of empire in the eye. The central plot is basically a political intrigue. It’s a much twistier one than the fairly straightforward bildungsroman of the originals. And yet, for movies in which the systemic corruption and ultimate collapse of a representative government plays a huge role, they’re really eager to represent the Republic as the good guys and the Separatists as cartoon villains, in a way that allows them to toss out nuanced politics for battle scenes. Maybe that’s what they thought their audience wanted to see. But it leaves the viewer with a story that is fascinating and moving and complex if they care to look even a centimeter below the surface – and a narrative that seems to have almost zero willingness to engage with the complexities of that subtext. And it screws the pacing and characterization all to hell, because they try to cram a politically and morally complicated story into the archetypal Good-vs-Evil Pure-Farmboy-vs-the-Death-Star structure of the originals.

Like I said, maybe that’s more about what they thought their audience wanted to see than it is about subconscious discomfort with the Empire’s resemblance to Space America, but I’ve always thought there’s a bit of tension in Star Wars (and quite a lot of other American movies, actually) between the young-scrappy-and-hungry rebels – which American culture tends to celebrate and identify with (I mean, just check out who’s sporting a British accent in the originals, and who isn’t) – and the imperial reality that’s closer to America’s actual role in the world over the past century or so. It was great to see Rogue One make that so explicit.

And finally, if you doubt that the Empire is Space America, just look at the hobby certain conservative talking heads have made – whether in earnest identification with them or in trollish alt-right-style “irony” – out of claiming that they’re the good guys.