ok so I’m not nb or trans but for someone to be told their whole life that there is only ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ and that whatever you’ve got down there is who you are forever, for someone to see all that and still recognise who they are as someone who defies everything they have been told about gender, that is fucking amazing.
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.
It was bad enough to realise that your life is a work of fiction. But it was truly awful to realise that the author is 12.
That’s your first thought anyway. You watch the world bloom around you in short bursts and think that you’re fucked. You think that there’s no way that you’re going to be able to live the sort of life you always imagined for yourself. You think that this is all that there will ever be in your world; a decent setting, unsettling exclamations, and so many plot holes that you’ve been to a psychiatrist twice to get checked for memory problems. You think your life is going to be inconsistent, sloppy and incomprehensible.
You’re wrong.
After a year, you notice that there are more people in your life. Your job isn’t solely populated by your boss, the secretary and the janitor who killed your best friend five years ago (which you can’t remember). Now there’s a woman named Mary-lee in the cubicle next to yours and a man named Gonzalez who works in a whole other department. Your company only had one department last year. Now it’s got two.
You stop shouting quite so much and you stop feeling the need to smirk every time you see someone making a fool of themselves. Your words are more reasoned now, more natural, and you find your conversations lasting longer with your new coworkers and neighbors. Your city grows, suburbs springing up overnight. The trees start losing their leaves in the fall and it’s not always night time when bad news arrives.
Your eyes aren’t orbs anymore, they’re just eyes.
When you run into your estranged brother in the hall of your apartment building, you wait for the ridiculous explanation for why he’d move in with you. Maybe every other house in the city is full? Maybe he didn’t know you lived there? Maybe it just “be like that sometimes?”
Turns out he’s not moving in. The woman he’s dating lives two doors down and he’s just as surprised as you. Small world.
Yes, it’s a bit contrived. Yes, it’s a little out of the blue. But, you realize, that’s how stories go. Sometimes they’re out of the blue. Making the out of the blue seem normal? That’s the mark of a true storyteller.
They’re getting better, you realize, watching your brother walk away. A lot better.
They’ve been writing your life everyday. You don’t know why you didn’t think about that. Of course they’re getting better. Through plot struggles and unpleasant writer’s block, they’ve stuck with you and your story.
Through everything, every shred of doubt, every shiny new idea, every criticism, they’ve stuck with you. They’ve worked hard to build your life around you. They’ve put in the time to get better, to give you better dialogue and a brilliant place to live and an exciting life.
They’ve grown for you.
Thank the author that you were lucky enough to grow with them.
one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math
some of my favorite tags on this post
Don’t forget that Frodo also speaks Sindarin, which makes this even worse.
Faramir: Hey, don’t go up the Spider Stairs.
Frodo: Why? What’s up the Spider Stairs?
Faramir: We don’t know, Frodo. We just don’t know.
Inspector Javert was every kind of extra, that binch
Oh boo hoo the world doesn’t align itself to my black-and-white moral code, I’ve elected to kickdrop myself off a bridge rather than examine myself as a person
Hey my girlfriend can’t afford to get to uni next week and she’s doing a really intense course that’s basically 2 years of work in one year (like everyone who does it says it’s harder than any year of a degree) so It’s really important that she goes to every class that she can. We’d cut back on stuff to pay for it but we are literally down to the last of our money. So anyway if you can afford to help out, please send what you can on paypal to optimus92@hotmail.co.uk
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 