4d ago

So close to getting it...

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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.
  
  frankly, I think you are mistaken about what it means to be political. It isn't strictly about one party vs another. you can talk about politics without explicitly supporting or disliking a political party.
  being political at the core is about policy.
  and this is why star wars was political from the start. it wasn't just a cool story, it was meant in part to make you sympathise with the rebels, and dislike the empire. And crucially, to link the rebels to Vietnam and the empire with the US and Nixon. it shows a dislike of what the US was doing, what the party in charge was doing, and perhaps to turn people away from that.
  saying all that isn't political is like saying Bob Dylan wasn't political because he didn't support one or another party
  
  If you went back to the 1970s and told people you thought Star Wars was a political movie, they would think something was really wrong with your thought process. The themes, characters, and the basic structure of the story (the Hero's Journey / monomyth) was old when the Greeks invented democracy. It certainly predates anything we could call politics, it predates almost everything about us. It is probably one of humanity's oldest inventions that's still in common use.
  Bob Dylan was always political, by the definition I would use, because he talked about issues of public policy and society in his songs. A New Hope was never political and still isn't. If a person wants to define the new and more inclusive Star Wars, and Sesame Street, as "political," then fine, although I will probably want to probe their definition and probably will try to make the case that the way they're defining this neologism is part of a toxic propaganda structure they've unintentionally absorbed.
  I don't usually like to get into extensive wrangling about what words mean what things, but this one I do think is important because of how it features in a particular type of propaganda structure which is good to call out.
  
  Star Wars is a movie about the policy of an authoritarian government, and the actions of those that fall on both sides of that policy. It's explicitly political. It was written to be so.
  
  All that text just to still be dead wrong is impressive really
  
  Nah, most Republicans I've.met are absolutely like this. You're a cis white male Republican, or you're being political and rude.
  
  I think I triggered the Lemmy "It's an enemy! Get him!" machine with careless phrasing of the beginning, so that people took the opposite meaning from it as what I meant to say.
  What do you think I am saying, that you are describing as dead wrong?
  
  I don't think you did. I got your meaning even before you explained everything nicely. It seems more like this topic has attracted attention of the people using "political" in the twisted sense you describe.
  
  I don't think so, actually. I think they are sincere left-wingers who love nothing more than being hostile to enemies, and once they think they've found one, they really don't want to let go of that classification because being self-righteous about the enemies being bad is a really fun thing. Sometimes they even have to invent new categories of enemies ("he doesn't want vegan cat food LET'S FUCK HIM UP") because there is a shortage and that lets them engage in what they like to do, but if they find an actual Republican or something? Boy howdy can they get going.
  Honestly, I do see how it doesn't require some crazy misunderstanding to read what I originally wrote as being pro-Trump. I expected people to see the context and interpret it accordingly, as you did, but apparently not. The sarcasm part was easy to miss, I do think, I guess, if you're not already looking for it or something.
  Whatever. I fixed it to be definitely clear now, my part is done, I wash my hands of it lol.
  
  The thing you're wrong about is Star Wars not being political in the actual sense of the word. And it was explained to you by other commenters. And since you're also implying that art being political is somehow bad, you cannot admit it.
  Art has always been political and that's a good thing. Next to everything we see, say or do in our day to day lives is political. People who present themselves as apolitical are being political, because they promote preserving the status quo and not rocking the boat.
  
  No, it's because you are totally wrong about the definition of political. You made it up and spammed a wall of text.
  
  I don't think anybody got from your comments that you're pro trump
  
  I think you have good intentions with that post, but I also 'think' I get why you're being reamed: We cannot simply "not accept" a broadened definition of the word "political".
  Words are for communication. If many, many others have already wholly swallowed the pill that any "undesirable" position on any topic is "political", then it behooves a good communicator to work with that definition, not to simply reject it for being academically inaccurate.
  Basically... you're doing about the same as someone griping about others saying, "lol I'm so OCD" because they like to arrange their books alphabetically. Except on a much, much looser term than something like OCD, because football dude kneeling was a political statement against police brutality. As much as we all wish the world was more sane than that, it isn't.
  
  Yeah, I get that. I do think that the way this particular word features in one particular type of propaganda structure makes it worthwhile to call out at length and talk about.
  
  Worth talking about in academia. Not worth talking about at length when communicating with normies or 99% of the real world.
  
  Yeah, what could go wrong if we let propaganda, wild misunderstandings and distortions of reality, start to impact the public consciousness and affect people's decisions or voting decisions or whatever?
  I literally can't think of a single downside.
  
  When you said that football guy kneeling wasn't political, I started to seriously question what your motives are. He literally knelt, during the national anthem, in a political protest against police brutality. Politics isn't capitol hill bullshit. I'm fairly certain that you don't have a deep enough understanding about politics to come in here and be the arbiter of what is and isn't political.
  While I understand the sentiment of your statement, and I think it was well intentioned, I think you're wrong
  
  no, star wars is political in the "old" sense.
  
  The whole fucking thing was about taking over the senate
  
  The prequels? The prequels had some political content, yes. Probably not any "political" content, that is limited to the more recent movies only.

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