this is short-circuiting lib brains in the comments so hard. like he’s pointing out to them almost explicitly as possible that the u.s. are the real bad guys in star wars (literally, lucas intended that) and they still don’t fucking get it.
Right? I’ve been pointing out over the past few hours in a couple spots that we have actual quotes from Lucas directly stating that the Rebel alliance were inspired by the Viet Cong and the downvotes are flying left and right.
It reminds me of one of my all time favorite reddit posts where a vet was basically doing the run down on his own disillusionment with the military. Paraphrasing, but he did use this specific analogy and word choice: “I thought I was signing up to be Luke Skywalker…instead I wound up being just another Stormtooper, carrying a spear for empire.”
There were scenes in Rogue One where I’m certain stormtroopers were supposed to evoke imagery of American soldiers in Iraq.
You know Rogue One is by far the best of Disney Era Star Wars on film…but man…after having seen it twice and really sat with it I actually think my biggest issue with it is I really dislike that the retconning of the Death Star’s weakness/flaw was intentionally built in.
Now, more then ever, I feel like intentionally or not Lucas really absolutely fucking nailed that one. Litterally countless amounts of credits, time, and engineering sunk into that massive behemoth of a war machine from the military industrial complex and it all completely falls apart at the seams and goes to shit from an elegantly small and simple amount of pressure applied at just the right spot.
i think it doesn’t help that almost all anti-u.s. messaging in media is a hidden and glancing blow at best. can’t afford to scare off investors, y’know? inside is probably the most explicitly anti-u.s.-way-of-life media i’ve seen in years, and libs still manage to read a fixation on identity politics and hand wringing into it.
he’s pointing out to them almost explicitly as possible that the u.s. are the real bad guys in star wars
I mean… eh? The Bad Guys are Generic Imperialists. But from a 1979 reading of the movie, they could just as easily have been Nazis or Soviets (the US did a masterful job of portraying Soviets as imperialist after Hungary, and again in their portrayal of Soviet involvement in Vietnam, Korea, and Cuba).
Firefox, Red Dawn, Rambo II, and Invasion USA all set America as the victims of imperialism and the underdogs in the East/West fight. Viewed through that lens, a blonde kid from Space Kansas using Spirituality to defeat the Soulless Industrial Megaproject is very easily equated to a Pro-America film.
it is easily equated, but george lucas has stated in the past that the Rebels were supposed to be analogous to the Vietnamese, not the americans.
And JK Rowling claimed Dumbledore was canonically gay.
Like, I get where he might have drawn inspiration from. But at the time of release, I doubt many Americans came out of the theater thinking “Oh gee, the Vietcong have a lot of good points”. Reagan and his cronies absolutely pounced on Star Wars as a media concept and repeatedly leveraged its popularity to describe the Soviets as the Evil Empire. Star Wars was weaponized by the US as anti-Soviet propaganda. I know, because my father - a shameless Sci-Fi nerd and diehard Republican - freely described the Soviets in these terms.
Absolutely, and that fact is simultaneously the greatest strength and weakness of fantasy and science fiction.
The beauty of scifi is you can explore larger themes and concepts in a way that recontextualizes and makes you rethink your own biases. It’s why alien invaders is the oldest scifi trope in the book: because the fear is “what if we get colonize though?!?!”
That said: Scifi and media in general can’t on its own make someone anti-american or not racist towards a certain section…but it can give someone the brainworm that imperialism and racism = bad.
The hard work is to get people to understand who really resembles who in the analogy.
:che-poggers:
Omg did he actually post this
From a certain point of view…
https://twitter.com/hamillhimself/status/1422596057024839681?s=21
He’s a massive lib, but this is cool
:sickomogus:
