Reminds me of this
this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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Ima firin' my Moo Deng!
inserts clip from Clerks on why Death Star contractors deserved it
If a large portion of your audience is rooting for your empire, you simply have not portrayed imperialism vividly enough.
This is one of my major criticisms of Star Wars: Lucas relied way more on aesthetics and narrative tension to simply designate the Empire as cartoon antagonists for his fluffy space opera samurai western about the Vietnam war. The whole tone is outlandish and unreal, and the Empire you see is just a sort of sinister and mustache twirling threat to the protagonists while all their arbitrary violence happens offscreen to characters that generally don't even have screentime.
And I mean media doesn't have to be deep and thorough or contain harrowing explorations of just why the villains should in fact be considered ontologically evil, but Star Wars is this cultural juggernaut yet is almost entirely just this shallow, light and fluffy slop where aesthetics are everything and the villains' evil is just implied or kept somewhere in the background. Then this intersects with a broader sort of "villains are cool and have agency while heroes are just dumb nerds fighting to preserve someone else's status quo" zeitgeist that finds fertile ground in the brain dirt of American treat lads because of how it's the natural conclusion to draw when looking at how in slop media antagonists are the primary agents of change while heroes must be reluctant and selfless agents of the status quo, not to mention how the powerful and self-actualized villain is an ideal power fantasy for some amoral libertine treat lad.
Just to add to this, and to be fair to George, I don't know what it was like to make commercial movies during the cold war. Seems like they were very careful, especially since the empire was the US in George's head. They may have had good reason to be as careful with the messaging and symbolism as they were.
I just realized I'd gotten sidetracked and left out part of what I wanted to say, which was to tie it into how satire isn't something that changes minds so much as it is entertainment and reinforcement for people who already understand and agree with it, and how in that lens Star Wars communicates its point clearly: the Fascist-coded genocidal maniac Empire are obviously intrinsically bad and alluding to several real-world powers, which is clear to anyone who's the least bit politically literate. But it's also fun, accessible slop for everyone who's not, which is most people, and its general themes and style have been further copied by more incoherent and vapid works (including within the Star Wars franchise itself) to the point that people don't really think about it beyond a sort of "the Sith/Empire wears the designated villain sign, the Jedi/Republic/Rebels wear the designated good guy sign, and which one you stan is a silly aesthetic sportsball choice of strawberry or blue-raspberry flavored lightsaber shaped gummies" level.
Yeah I remember how I spent a long time being exposed to Star Wars (didn't watch the movies, but generally absorbed its presence in pop culture) without ever learning what made the Empire the bad guys aside from the fact that they had bad guy aesthetics.
It was pretty much the same for me. Both my parents were big Star Wars nerds so I did see the movies and got a ton of the EU books, but even there if you don't know what to look for it's just like "oh they're the bad guys, they're doing bad guy stuff that opposes the protagonists, and some of them do cartoon villain stuff sometimes but mostly it's just this team vs team thing where you're rooting for the POV characters." I don't remember any of that slop ever really conveying how realistically awful those cartoon bad guys were, although at the same time that's not really something that fluffy pop culture media can necessarily do on its own since it relies on knowing the broader context in which a work was made.
Like how a lot of the Empire's casual atrocities that do make it into the OT are just like things the US was regularly doing in Vietnam, except Americans in general neither know nor think about that and wouldn't just casually make the association.
was it Lucas that while being interviewed said to "read Fanon?"
This is why the best stories have the villains be the status quo.
Tbf, that is the case in star wars. At least the ot
This is by design so they can sell more Storm Trooper plushies at Disneyland.
It's always so strange and off putting how Disneyland does live Imperial rallies with the aesthetics of Triumph of the Will for audiences of kids
When they had that star ship hotel guests could have their personal Star Wars^tm^ Experience which let them side with the Empire and the climax of the story was ratting out Chewbacca and having him dragged off by stormtroopers
When they had that star ship hotel guests could have their personal Star Wars™ Experience
*when the $2 per minute Experience™ actually worked and didn't put you on a random story line because their shit app didn't work right half the time
Do they even have people in Rebel Alliance costumes?
At the very least, they have people in Resistance costumes. They kind of blend the time together
That said, I think Disney is on the BDS list, so emphasizing the fascist aesthetic would be in line for them...
I've never been but I'd presume/hope so, they really seem to emphasise the Imperials though for whatever reason.
Frankly, alot of the "hype" can be boiled down to the fact the Rebel's aesthetics just aren't as interesting or dynamic as the Empire or the Grand Army during the Clone Wars
Shiny space armor simply looks cooler than fatigues and orange jumpsuits, the X-wing starfighters are pretty much all the Rebels have going for them in terms of "neat sci fi tech" it's shallow, but casuals respond to the 'rule of cool'
The portrayals are accurate IMO. Fascists have always valued aesthetics over function (and communists the inverse). That's why Hitler's wonderwaffles lost to the T-34 (not directly but you know what I mean).
valued aesthetics over function
It was true with their uniforms, too. The Allies valued functionality and ergonomics with field uniforms. Pockets were in places that made sense, ammo was carried in easy to reach places, etc. Here's German vs. American paratroopers as an example:
Notice how the Germans have grenades just tucked into their belts (weird place to put an explosive when jumping out a plane idk), while the Americans have their grenades firmly secured to their shoulders. You can't see it in the American photo, but they wore pistols on their hip or strapped to their ankles. The Germans have to open their holster forward, rather than sideways. The Americans have ammo pouches they can reach while prone. The Germans can only reach some of their pouches while prone and have to lay on top of them. The Americans have lots of pockets and pouches for carrying aid supplies, tools, etc. spread out to distribute the weight evenly. The Germans have everything stored in backpacks (also making it more likely to lose your gear when jumping out of an airplane). The Germans have shiny steel helmets. The Americans' helmets have netting over them to reduce reflections.
Guess which one carried out the largest paratrooper attack in history with success and which one was given up on because they weren't effective enough to justify the cost?
This is just like Squid Game
WE PUT ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE IN NARKINA FIVE 
I love this show but it kind of bothers me that it's technically made by a capitalist corporation. It feels as if stories of real struggles are being used as just entertainment.
Yeah, but this has literally always been the case. Radical media that challenges the status quo has always been produced using the system that it's challenging. You think the Communist Manifesto was never published by capitalists? You think Bakunin or Proudhon never used presses owned by monarchists or capitalists? Of course they did. You use the tools available to you.
The fact Andor was made by people working for Disney doesn't make it any less radical or challenging to the status quo.
Talked to the guy at work who loves WH40K and he said "You know that show made me switch from rooting for the Rebels to rooting for the Empire. Because you see in Andor they don't have it that bad."
And I said "haha yeah" because what can you even say to a statement so baldly wrongheaded.
they don't have it that bad
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Did he somehow miss the first movie where an entire planet of civilians was blown up just to get a confession from one person?! Or are we so far down the prequel dodecahedron we've lost all sense of tension.
Is andor the Syril arse mfers to fume huffer pipeline?
