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Schwarzwald posted:The visual shorthand is that the Empire's soldiers wear uniforms, employ a fleet of battleships and carriers, and have a weapon capable of wiping out planets. The first two can apply to any navy, Nazi or otherwise, but given that the Death Star is short hand for the atomic bomb -- it ain't the Nazi's that the Empire is meant to stand in for. You're not totally wrong. I'd say it's using one to suggest the other. BravestOfTheLamps posted:the movies very thoroughly show that the Empire are not Nazis. See what I mean? You're tying yourself up and missing the forest for the trees (btw yes I know you probably don't live in a forest). It definitely does work as a metaphor, regardless of the number of flaws you can list, because of the power of this visual shorthand in our particular context.
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Mar 26, 2018 17:07
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The final scene in A New Hope is modeled on the fourth day in Triumph of the Will, ergo the Rebellion is fascist.
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Mar 26, 2018 17:30
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J_RBG posted:Also might I remind you that in order to establish this groundbreaking observation he claims the First Order aren't fascists. You know the ones who held a Nazi rally on their big weapon-planet, where Hux shouted about the Republic who "acquiesce to dis-or-derrr", there was a deliberate use of Nazi colour schemes, and then the Stormtroopers did a salute with one arm raised. J_RBG posted:See what I mean? You're tying yourself up and missing the forest for the trees (btw yes I know you probably don't live in a forest). It definitely does work as a metaphor, regardless of the number of flaws you can list, because of the power of this visual shorthand in our particular context. You're conflating "textual" with "literalist". Again, the problem is that you think that the movie doesn't explain what the Empire is. I'm pointing out that the movies do just that, and they explain that the Empire is not Nazis. They are simply The State. Your mistake here is that you depend just on visual shorthand as opposed to visual stroytelling or substance. The dominant visual of the Empire is technology - we are presented with an interstellar ship, and then invading ghostly robots. The visual storytelling is actually rather antithetical to Nazi aesthetic and its cult of heroism. J_RBG posted:the ones who held a Nazi rally on their big weapon-planet, where Hux shouted about the Republic who "acquiesce to dis-or-derrr", there was a deliberate use of Nazi colour schemes, and then the Stormtroopers did a salute with one arm raised. Here the keyword is "deliberate": the Empire/First Order are intended as fascists, therefore they are. The First Order rally uses shorthand to evoke Nazi rally, but in substance it is nothing like a Nazi rally. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 17:42
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To get back to "Nazis are our society's basic metaphor for evil on the world-political stage," that doesn't imply that the Empire are Nazis because they're bad guys, or that similarities between the Empire and the US imply the US are are Nazis! Rather, it implies that people confuse being a bad guy with being a Nazi. If Nazis are modern society's basic metaphor for evil, then we should be careful not to automatically assume any bad guy government or militia in a story is a stand in for the Nazis. To do so is to risk overlooking the actual contents of the film.
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Mar 26, 2018 18:38
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It's a movie for a mass audience, so if they look like Nazis they're pretty much Nazis barring any major evidence to the contrary.
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Mar 26, 2018 18:52
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It's a movie for a mass audience, so if Yoda doesn't look like a Jedi he pretty much isn't a Jedi barring major evidence to the contrary.
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Mar 26, 2018 19:08
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:It's a movie for a mass audience, so if Yoda doesn't look like a Jedi he pretty much isn't a Jedi barring major evidence to the contrary. ....Yup?
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Mar 26, 2018 19:31
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We have plenty of evidence that the Empire are not Nazis - mainly, they do absolutely nothing Nazi-like. The argument is that the movie employs "visual shorthand" by equating the villains with Nazis. In other words, that it's invoking Godwin's Law. The claim that the Empire would stop being Nazis if the movie had been marketed differently is also very funny.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:02
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Well see Stormtroopers are technically a reference to German soldiers in World War I so really they are kind of just an amalgam of German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman soldiers and the whole thing is a allegory for the powder keg that can result from testable alliances. Viewed from this lens, we can see that Finn is essentially Gavrilo Princip.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:35
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:We have plenty of evidence that the Empire are not Nazis - mainly, they do absolutely nothing Nazi-like. The argument is that the movie employs "visual shorthand" by equating the villains with Nazis. In other words, that it's invoking Godwin's Law. Probably more accurate to say if the Empire had stopped being Nazis the movie would have been marketed differently.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:48
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Your argument is that the Empire are Nazis because of "commonly assumed visual shorthand," when the movies very thoroughly show that the Empire are not Nazis. Nazism is based on expansionistic nationalism and violent racism, the Empire has no expansionism, no nation, and no race. Nazism is populistic, the Empire has no people, not even a name. Nazism syncreticizes traditions, the Empire has no traditions. Assuming I'm reading this right, I can't help but agree with BotL. One of the biggest problems with Star Wars is that the Empire is a fuzzy rendering of "evil militaristic authoritarians who blow things up when you make them mad" and that's about it. We have no idea what they stand for. We have no idea what their actual goals are. We just know they're dressed as militaristic authoritarians and they blow up a planet or two because they're evil. When I watch Star Wars, I don't care one tiny bit about the conflict between the Rebellion and the Empire, at least not on an emotional level. It's basically a broad-strokes backdrop for the human-level conflicts, and that's perfectly fine until it takes center-stage like it does in Return of the Jedi. That movie falls really flat for me with the exception of Luke's final confrontation with Vader, because that part actually has concrete stakes and has had character development to build up to it for the whole trilogy. Having the Empire (and, by extension, the First Order) blow up planets is a cheap way to try to raise the stakes and Star Wars is at its most boring when it relies on Rebellion/Resistance vs. Empire/First Order as the centerpiece rather than the background.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:50
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Empire aren't advocating expansive nationalism, Anti-Semitism, or racial supremacy. They're sci-fi military types who usurped a theocratic police force and an aristocratic assembly. The empire invades and militarily occupies a significant number of planets over the course of its rule. They openly advocate human first bigotry, and commonly exterminate alien populations. If your argument is 'well acktuslly there are no Jews in space therefore they can't be fascist' then you are even dumber than I gave you credit for. The emperor was a charismatic politician who held the public rank of chancellor of a Republic. He was granted considerable extraordinary powers for the role by the legislature due to a series of significant internal upheavals. After having his stormtroopers execute his political and paramilitary enemies in a sweeping purge he goes on to claim absolute power with significant public approval of his actions. The empire is clearly written and visually marked as space fascists. No, there is not a 1:1 of every single aspect of the Nazi regime, but it is absurd to act like the empire isn't obviously written as fascist.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:53
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Caros posted:The empire is clearly written and visually marked as space fascists. No, there is not a 1:1 of every single aspect of the Nazi regime, but it is absurd to act like the empire isn't obviously written as fascist. The Empire possesses none of the basic aspects of fascism - violent nationalism, populism, worship of heroism, racism (there is no "human" identity in Star Wars, every character is some sort of alien, which anyway is not the opposite of human and vice versa), etc. As made clear, the movies show shorthand for fascism but no substance of the topic. Fascism requires an identity, but the universe of Star Wars is conveyed in such broad, generic terms that the Empire doesn't even have a name. Nazis committed genocide for purposes of racist ideology, while the Empire blows up a planet merely out of spiteful whimsy. Also, earlier an unwitting comparison was made between the Jedi and the Bush Administration. Now we're seeing the Jedi being equated with the victims of the Night of the Long Knives, which included Nazis. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 21:09
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Empire possesses none of the basic aspects of fascism - violent nationalism, populism, worship of heroism, racism (there is no "human" identity in Star Wars, every character is some sort of alien, which anyway is not the opposite of human and vice versa), etc. As made clear, the movies show shorthand for fascism but no substance of the topic. The First Galactic Empire... Makes me think of...
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Mar 26, 2018 21:16
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The Death Star, the Technological Tool of Spiteful Whimsy.
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Mar 26, 2018 21:18
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I don't think BotL is worth engaging with, he'll just keep pretending to not understand fiction on the most basic level while verbally jacking off.
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Mar 26, 2018 21:35
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Empire possesses none of the basic aspects of fascism - violent nationalism, populism, worship of heroism, racism (there is no "human" identity in Star Wars, every character is some sort of alien, which anyway is not the opposite of human and vice versa), etc. As made clear, the movies show shorthand for fascism but no substance of the topic. So... Are you one of those people who just doesn't 'see' racism or something? Because the imperials in Star Wars are racist (or specist if you'd prefer, since thst is the sci fi stand in for racism) as gently caress. In the first three films the only aliens we see in the employ of the imperium are the bounty hunters. There are no non-human officers, or non-human troopers. This extends into the new films as well, though at least now they've gotten to the point where there are female imperials, well, okay, one female imperial officer. Thrawn when he was introduced, was distinctive because he was the only non-human imperial admiral, because the galactic empire was notoriously racist as gently caress. As far as your nonsense about genocide, the empire has conducted numerous non-deathstar related genocides against alien races. They have the wookies pretty much in perpetual slavery, they committed what they thought was a genocide against the lasat and so forth.
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Mar 26, 2018 21:36
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Caros posted:So... Are you one of those people who just doesn't 'see' racism or something? Because the imperials in Star Wars are racist (or specist if you'd prefer, since thst is the sci fi stand in for racism) as gently caress. The Empire is mostly alien - the stormtroopers, Darth Vader, and the Emperor are all strange extraterrestrial beings. The officers are all human to show that they're bland. Caros posted:Thrawn Nobody cares about the *~Expanded Universe~*
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Mar 26, 2018 21:42
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:The Empire is mostly alien - the stormtroopers, Darth Vader, and the Emperor are all strange extraterrestrial beings. The officers are all human to show that they're bland. Oh, cool, you're a loving moron. That helps.  Also Thrawn appears in Rebels which is honestly better than the last two movies and is canon as gently caress.
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Mar 26, 2018 21:43
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Even the humans in the Empire are aliens. They're all extraterrestrials. "Canon" is meaningless when applied to fiction.
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Mar 26, 2018 21:46
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Say what you will about BotL but "they're dressed like nazis ergo the first order are nazis" is just about the lamest "analysis" of a movie
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Mar 26, 2018 21:57
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Caros posted:In the first three films the only aliens we see in the employ of the imperium are the bounty hunters. There are no non-human officers, or non-human troopers. This extends into the new films as well, though at least now they've gotten to the point where there are female imperials, well, okay, one female imperial officer. drat near every piece of evidence that the Empire are Nazis applies equally to the Rebellion, who are also depicted as nearly fully human for the first two films. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Mar 27, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 21:57
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Even the humans in the Empire are aliens. They're all extraterrestrials. God drat, you're a deliberately obtuse fucker.
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Mar 26, 2018 21:58
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I mean Chew bacca and jar jar are definitely black lets be honest.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:00
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Waffles Inc. posted:Say what you will about BotL but "they're dressed like nazis ergo the first order are nazis" is just about the lamest "analysis" of a movie yuuuup the first order isn't really meant to evoke anything real world, it's just evoking the previous galactic empire. it has some vague nazi trappings because the empire had some vague nazi trappings it's this weird echo of an echo that ends up feeling more vacuous as a result
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Mar 26, 2018 22:02
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Even the humans in the Empire are aliens. They're all extraterrestrials. Why are you applying the logic of racial ‘colourblindness’ to Star Wars? Don’t be stupid. The First Order are not incomprehensibly nebulous; they are specifically ‘The Party’ from 1984. But this does not apply retroactively; the Empire is mundanely fascist. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 26, 2018 22:02
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Waffles Inc. posted:Say what you will about BotL but "they're dressed like nazis ergo the first order are nazis" is just about the lamest "analysis" of a movie
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Mar 26, 2018 22:04
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The droids are a gay black gay and a black guy with dwarfism. Darth Vader has emphysma. Leia is a woman. Luke is mentally challenged. Admiral Akbar has psiorisis.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:05
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Whatever the Empire is if not human, they're that-supremacist.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:58
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These guys in Staf Wars movie just look like Nazis. Appearance means absolutely nothing in a visual medium, dummies.
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Mar 26, 2018 23:12
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The idea that the Empire is has no characterization is a hollow argument. From the prequels we see the language used to justify it's creation in very Fascist terms about "security" and similar rhetoric about how democracy has become unable to secure us from threats. Palatine explicitly presents himself like a Fascist style messianic figure. His speech where he proclaims the Empire is full of that kind of language. In deleted scenes from ANH they talk about how they're confiscating the farms of people like Owen Lars now that they've annexed Tatooine. In the final version we see them reorganizing society along military governorships just like many Fascist states did. In ESB Lando talks about how he has to keep Cloud City under the radar because otherwise it will be gobbled p by Imperial backed corps. like the Mining Guild, again just like Fascism.
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Mar 26, 2018 23:53
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Bongo Bill posted:Whatever the Empire is if not human, they're that-supremacist. "I am C3PO human-cyborg relations" "I'm sure he'll be all right. He's quite clever, you know... for a human being." C3PO in reference to Luke. "A wonderful human being." Jabra in reference to Han. "Sometimes I just don't understand human behavior. After all, I'm only trying to do my job..." "I'm the only human being that can do it." Anakin about pod racing. Humans are straight up called humans in Star wars. Also, hell exists, apparently.
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Mar 26, 2018 23:55
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:"Canon" is meaningless when applied to fiction. So sequels (or prequels) are meaningless? Because if nothing is canonical...every single film stands in a vacuum
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Mar 27, 2018 00:23
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Halloween Jack posted:It's very weird when, to make their point about movies, people have to argue that filmmakers are dumb and don't care and audiences are dumb and don't care and Disney doesn't conduct marketing meticulously so the content of a movie is determined by "shorthands." This is a misread of the term 'shorthand'. Loads of filmmaking techniques are shorthands that allow you to convey information economically. Cuts for example tell you all kinds of things subliminally. The passage of time, for example.
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Mar 27, 2018 00:37
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UmOk posted:These guys in Staf Wars movie just look like Nazis. Appearance means absolutely nothing in a visual medium, dummies. Look man, for all you know they came from Hugobossio IV. Don't judge.
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Mar 27, 2018 00:40
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[looks at the heroes' plan to infiltrate the death star being contingent on having chewbacca as a prisoner] hmm. of course 'racist empire' describes many non-nazi groups as well, including one whose accents match, so
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Mar 27, 2018 01:00
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The First Order don't actually know how to be Nazis, they're LARPing. Just taking half-understood ideals and aesthetics from the past and imitating them. Kind of like the alt-right, or Disney's Star Wars
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Mar 27, 2018 01:46
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Even the humans in the Empire are aliens. They're all extraterrestrials. Leave the jivjoving to jivjov, please.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:14
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jivjov posted:So sequels (or prequels) are meaningless? Because if nothing is canonical...every single film stands in a vacuum That is not what "canon" is. "Canonicity" is the quality by which a text is determined worthy and necessary to be read. It is meaningless when applied to say which of the cretinous spin-off novels to movies "officially" happened.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:23
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:That is not what "canon" is. "Canonicity" is the quality by which a text is determined worthy and necessary to be read. It is meaningless when applied to say which of the cretinous spin-off novels to movies "officially" happened. No...the Star Wars canon is what works are and aren't part of the ongoing narrative. Whether or not a work is worth reading/watching/etc is most likely gonna be a completely subjective decision.
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Mar 27, 2018 04:39
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