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.)
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Once I realised it was Twitter, it all makes sense. It’s a hellsite let it die.