brawleh posted:

They are no longer being ordered to die for the interest of profit. The Trade Federation is no longer trading within the republic, they are rebelling within a separatist movement.

Neurolimal posted:

The imperials launch a movement against the rebels. They lose because they do not hold the will of the public, only the privileged few. It is a result of a diverse coalition of the republics' citizens (including the ewoks, who are not strong enough to be this nefarious Other, nor is it established that they are not members of the New Republic. If anything their worship of a republic citizen says the opposite) that the second death start is destroyed and the empire is defeated.

They fomulate an ideology around the ideals of the republic which are subverted by the empire. That is why The New Republic is erected in the Empire's place.

I do not know for what reason the fictional character Leia chooses to rebel. I can only state that it is noble of her to do so when she does not need to.

Neurolimal posted:

Hoth.

Neurolimal posted:

we're back to images of slavemasters forcing their slaves to fight for them, being opposed by the newest free race of the republic.

If the seperatists are morally different from the federation, they wouldn't be placing the slavemasters of the federation in high positions among their elite. Let alone composing their army entirely of enslaved droids.

Neurolimal posted:

It was wrong to militarize, yes. There were better uses of the Jedi than using them to command armies of already competent and tactical soldiers. This is a far more agreeable position than "they are not good because they should have ended slavery".

Neurolimal posted:

-and- interests. The separatists are no less culpable in their exploitation, if not moreso; instead of unashamedly exploiting the droids for profit, they exploit the droids for a movement they consider important but not important enough to die for.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

The "nefarious Other" you've fantasized is the elites of the Republic. The Rebellion is coming from inside the Establishment, as established in ANH. Ideology is limited to opposition of the Empire, not on democracy: Leia wants to restore the Old Republic (the Senate), while Luke wants vengeance. This is opposition, not a popular mandate.

quote:

Hoth contains only a military base. 'The people' are not there.

Serf posted:

What? Where is it shown that clones are free? The exact opposite is shown.

Neurolimal posted:

Where are the clones shown that they are enslaved prior to Order 66?

brawleh posted:

So why are the jedi not taking part in this rebellion when faced with it in order to make the cause just?(this is ignoring former jedi master leading the movement) This is your assertion, that when they see an uprising of droids, when faced with this truth, they should take part and aid them. Why then are they engulfing the galaxy in a civil war with a mirror to the droid army seen in an army of clones, rather than joining their oppressed brothers?

Neurolimal posted:

Where are the clones shown that they are enslaved prior to Order 66? Was it when Jango Cody and Obi-Wan had some friendly banter?

Serf posted:

I dunno, it might be the part where the clones are grown in vats, speedily aged to adulthood while being educated with strange techno-helmets. Eating in cafeterias all dressed in the same uniform and then made to march into battle.

I mean if you watch The Clone Wars there is literally an episode in the first season about a clone who betrays the Republic because he doesn't want to be cannon fodder anymore.

Neurolimal posted:

It wouldn't, which is why I brought up Windu's statement. The jedi lost before the fight at the office. At best Windu would have minimized the damage by erasing the last current generations' sith lord.

quote:

I didn't say they had to seize power. I said that they were not wrong to at least attempt a trial for Palpatine (and were not wrong to attempt to execute him after discovering that he was a Sith Lord).

Neurolimal posted:

So the reason they are enslaved is that they are not humans?

TCW does a better job of establishing the clones as enslaved. The clones of the Prequel Trilogy are not exploited. Prior to Order 66, at least.

Schwarzwald posted:

Oh, wow.

Lord Krangdar posted:

Sorry, I meant to say RotJ. As in (paraphrasing you) "What would the Rebels do once they had control of an unwilling Empire? They must either step down and allow the vacuum to be filled with an equally violent official, or must oppress the people to succeed in their coup."

Serf posted:

Neurolimal posted:

It's certainly exploitative, but considering who they are cloned from I'm inclined to believe that they are aggressive and faithful to their job as soldiers because those were traits of the Fetts. The republic benefits from their work, but did not make them warriors. Its dehumanizing, but at the same time they are not human; we do not know how the clone process works nor how they view their reproduction. For all we know, there could be a constantly updated vat of Jango Cody, and Cody himself views his own body as a disposable instrument.

Dooku certainly deserves blame for their war-focused culture, but it feels like they are as exploited as a free droid; someone influenced and coded them, does that mean they will always be slaves?

Neurolimal posted:

Yeah, but in the PT the mind control aspects are used only by Dracula. Outside of his orders (which the republic are never shown to be aware of) the troopers are joking, squabbling, smiling at thethe presumed "masters", and even get names (like Jango Cody).

Neurolimal posted:

Because you dont make a cause just by joining the slaveowners. The answer to the civil war was not to join the south.

The droids are not uprising for freedom. They are being commanded to rise up for the separatists' ideals. Which are not suggested to involve droid rights.

brawleh posted:

Why are they not joining in order to make the cause just when faced with the truth, as you assert they would. Again you're ignoring the jedi and the republic being the root cause of these problems. That the separatist movement is lead by a disillusioned former jedi master who tries to convince another of that order with the truth. You're clouding your own judgement on this issue in order to appeal and appease to a majority(republic) who don’t see droids as people, think about this.

Neurolimal posted:

If Cnut can see the reasoning in this argument, I'm sure you can as well.

Neurolimal posted:

The elites of the republic are the Imperials. The Imperials resist the rebels. The existence of sympathetic imperials does not suggest that the rebels are controlled by the imperials.

The rebels are the people. You are demanding that guerillas display themselves openly in civilian areas before you are willing to consider that members of the rebels are members of the citizens.

We even follow a member of the empire as he joins the rebels.

Serf posted:

Nah. The clones are very much human, and forcing them to fight is plain wrong. The movie practically beats the audience over the head with the slavery imagery, and in Attack of the Clones the Kamino cloning facility is likened to the Geonosis droid foundry. The clones and the droids are two armies of slaves fighting for two evil belligerents who are in turn both being duped by Palpatine.

E: I should add that forcing droids to fight is also wrong. If your liberal democracy has to force slaves to fight for it, it really doesn't deserve to exist.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Again, you are confused. Both the Rebels and the Empire exist only as armies and military bases. There is no popular component to them. Both are led by elites. The movies depict no social mobilization or organization for revolutionary purposes. The Rebel Allliance is not a popular, emancipatory movement, but a top-down movement to restore the Old Republic (that is to say, the Senate).

Again, there is nothing wrong with observing or admitting that the OT is a problematic portrait of social revolt. I don't love them any less for it.

Neurolimal posted:

Who says that they would be allowed to join? That they will be allowed to replace the unjust cause with a just cause? How will they make the separatists fight alongside droids? Are the droids capable of rebelling? Do the droid-wipe motherships still exist? Doesn't that same ship design show up in the opening of RotS?

brawleh posted:

Count Dooku leader of the separatist movement pleads with Obi-Wan to join him, he does using the truth. If his cause is driven by truth, why does Obi-Wan mistrust what he says? Again the separatists are visually depicted as a diverse and overwhelming force of droids fighting against a stagnant image from the past that seeks to suppress their uprising. Think about what you're saying. Impartiality does not exist only a subjective truth exists, confront this.

Neurolimal posted:

The abstract fails to connect to the literal. Despite the relation we have no reason not to treat the Jango race as a new race. They do not reproduce as humans. They do not grow as humans. They do not mutate as humans. They do not hold similar cultures as humans. They do not learn only as humans. They are humans only in DNA relation. And even that might be suspect if they have been genetically modified. The clones do not hate their role and see it as important. They are actively and happily chatting about it and cracking jokes and looking up to their generals (presumed slavemasters).

None of this happens with the droids. They are treated as disposable tools and respected as disposable tools. We are never shown a separatist talking to a droid as equals. We can say otherwise for the Jangos.

Neurolimal posted:

How would you propose a public element be included in a guerilla faction?

They do depict social mobilization. They do it almost verbatim for real life guerilla forces. A sympathetic citizen is discovered, a member of the force recruits them into their cause. They don't pick up shovels and scythes in a montage and stand around outside growling.

Sam Kriss posted:

At the start of A New Hope, we hear that the Alliance has growing support within the Imperial Senate, and Imperial Senates aren’t usually very fond of proper revolutionaries. Consider the Alliance’s tactics. Every time we meet the rebels, they have built themselves a base on some deserted planet, where they’re stockpiling heavy arms.

As any good student of Mao knows, a revolutionary movement can only succeed if it wins the trust of the people; holding territory is a game played by the State, not those trying to overthrow it. We never see the rebels being sheltered from Stormtroopers by grateful peasants (while they do ally with the Ewoks, it’s with a fully colonial sense of entitlement); we never see Alliance propaganda being passed around in secret by the oppressed; we never see any indication that this armed faction has any kind of popular mandate whatsoever.

Serf posted:

Sorry, I don't buy it. The clones are clearly shown to be indoctrinated. In a way, they're a lot like the stormtroopers of TFA. Brainwashed from a young age and forced to fight in someone else's war.

And let's say the clones are a different species. Now you have an entire slave species that is serving the whims of a supposedly liberal democracy and their guardians of peace and justice. Which is just as bad as a regular slave army.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

This is however unnecessary, since it would complicate the OT's naive romance. It is enough to observe that they do not represent truth.

Also, Obi-Wan isn't a member of the Rebel Alliance.

Neurolimal posted:

The separatist controllers are depicted as diverse. The droids are depicted as increasingly mutated and upgraded creatures with only one purpose; war. As one deadlier version is produced the older model is slowly outmoded from the army.

The imagery not only does not fit the literal actions, they do not even immediately support your reading, required strained readings where the positive values of the slaves are attributed to the slavemasters.

Neurolimal posted:

I see it a different way; Kamino depicts an incredibly alien environment, fitting for the birth of a new race. The Kaminoans themselves have a very nonthreatening design and attire, fitting for safekeepers for a currently resting nursery.

brawleh posted:

Yes you have successfully dehumanized an uprising of the oppressed, regardless of their intent, who fight a war against their oppressor. An oppressor who wishes to suppress this uprising in order to restore peace and by proxy restore them to their place within the republic(system). The imagery of the prequels couldn't be more clear. We start with a droid army first depicted as a uniform force that changes as they join a rebellion that embroils the galaxy in a civil war, only to faced a visually stagnant clone from the past.

Neurolimal posted:

I see it a different way; Kamino depicts an incredibly alien environment, fitting for the birth of a new race. The Kaminoans themselves have a very nonthreatening design and attire, fitting for safekeepers for a currently resting nursery.

Meanwhile Genosis is filthy, bleak, dark, industrial, monolithic. It calls to mind imagery of the Gilded Age, which is fitting for the center of the federation/separatists' exploitation of droids. Especially the contrast between the artificial and overwhelmingly hellish conditions the workers face, compared to the living conditions of the Separatists themselves.

I hope BOTL is taking so long to reply because they're studiously examining the Star Wars Holiday Special.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

It's explicitly a show for clients.

Serf posted:

And yet the clones and the droids will both end up dying pointlessly in a war that doesn't stand to benefit them. The droids will remain slaves as they always have (as seen in the OT and ST), and the clones will just rapidly die off. Neither is free in any sense of the word.

E: I don't know where this whole "droid uprising" thing came from but that is explicitly not what is happening in the PT. The Separatists may have legitimate grievances against the Republic, but the droids are just as oppressed under them as they are under the Republic.

brawleh posted:

euphronius posted:

Jesus the prequels are good.

Neurolimal posted:

I'm glad that we can happily handwave any readings that dont support our personal ones.

quote:

LAMA SU: "And now to business."

euphronius posted:

Jesus the prequels are good.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Obi-Wan, the client, is taken for a tour to show how advanced their clone factory is.


The whole scene is played as creepy and disconcerting. The Kaminoans are proud of "birth acceleration" and gene-manipulation that makes the clones less independent.